Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
The dedication4 line is all right.
I may not be in New York5 before the middle of September6. Can you hold the
limited edition7 until then for me to sign? If
not you can send the signatures to me at Denver, Colorado8, so that they will reach me
between August 1st
and 10 6th
I think it would be better to hold the limited edition9, bound or unbound, in New York and let me sign them when I arrived there. I will be in town for a few days during the early part of September—not later than the fifteenth.
Please send two
copies (2) of the book to me at
Hotel Olin10
Denver, Colo.
and hold the rest until I write you where to send them.
I’ll want you to mail them to various friends from your office, later on. But please
send a copy of the commercial edition11 to
Jan Hambourg12
c/o Bank of Montreal
Place Vendome
Paris, France13.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2566.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2566
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Robert S. Josephy1
- Date letter was written
- July 19 [1925]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of the letter is established by Cather's references to The Professor's House (1925).
- Place letter was written
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Hotel La Fonda (Santa Fe, NM): Luxury hotel in Santa Fe, NM, which was built in 1922. The hotel was owned by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway and managed by Fred Harvey when Cather and Edith Lewis stayed there in the summers of 1925 and 1926.
See #2556 and #2565
Cather spent part of September 1925 in Boston, MA, and Jaffrey, NH.
The first limited edition of The Professor's House (1925) consisted of 225 copies signed by Cather.
A luxury hotel in Denver, CO, built in 1925 and designed by architect James Mannning in the Spanish mission style.
The first printing of the trade edition of The Professor's House (1925) consisted of 20,000 copies priced at $2.00.
Person Annotations
Josephy, Robert S. (1903-1993). American book designer. Born on Long Island, Robert Josephy began working for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. at age seventeen in 1920, learning the trade of book design on the job. He was involved in the design of the jacket for Cather’s novel The Professor’s House (1925). In late 1925, he left the firm to begin a long and distinguished career as a freelance book designer. After buying an orchard in Connecticut he became active in environmentalism and liberal politics in the state. The University of Iowa Press published his autobiography Taking Part: A Twentieth Century Life shortly before his death.
Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle
McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto,
Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the
Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married
Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg
and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the
1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin
performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in
Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes
narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the
three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather
destroyed them.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
