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 |
AUG 31 1928
Filed by _____ August 28th Dear Alfred1;
I have waited3 for the September "Mercury"4 but it has not come. I'll be in New York5 by the middle of September and will see it then. I'm very pleased that the "Archbishop"6 is still moving on.
Now about Mabel Luhan7's memoirs. They are
intensely interesting and alive. She has an unusual talent for writing. I don't
remember all of the Villa Curonia part8,
but I'm sure none of it is dull. As much of it is brilliant (and merciless!)
portraiture of living people, she would have to cut it a great deal to avoid libel
suits, I should think. I don't know how much this cutting would effect the whole. You ought to read it yourself in
order to feel safe abu about the question of
libel.
I surely don't lament Wilson Follett's9 departure10. Prince Hamlets11 are awfully trying in business relations.
I'll be back in New York soon after Blanche's12 return.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2589.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2589
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- August 28 [1928]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
August 28, 1928, is the Wednesday preceding August 31, 1928, when the letter was stamped as received.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
On 20 August 1928, Knopf wrote Cather that he had mailed her a copy of the September 1928 American Mercury Magazine, in which he had advertised Death Comes for the Archbishop. He also reported that the novel had passed 77,000 in sales.
On 20 August 1928, Knopf reported that friends of Mabel Dodge Luhan had encouraged her to publish the Villa Curonia section of her memoirs separately as a book. From 1905-1912 Luhan and her then husband, Edwin Dodge, owned and occuppied Villa Curonia, a palatial residence located on a hilltop in Arcentri, Italy. Built by the Medicis in the fifteenth century, the villa overlooks the city of Florence on its north slope. Mabel and Edwin entertained Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Andre Gide, and other artists there.
On 20 August 1928, Knopf informed Cather that Follett was "no longer connected with us," and he assumed she would not "weep many tears over his departure."
Cather is evidently alluding to Prince Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, i.e. Follett was indecisive.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879-1962). American patron of the arts and
memoirist. Born Mabel Ganson into a wealthy Buffalo, NY, family,
Mabel Evans traveled to Paris, France, in 1904 after the death of her first
husband. She met and married Edwin Dodge there and moved with him to a villa
in Florence, Italy, where they collected art and Mabel conducted a salon.
She moved to New York City in 1912 and separated from her husband soon after
(they divorced in 1916). In her Fifth Avenue apartment near Washington
Square, she reestablished her salon and supported modern art and radical
political causes. Cather may have known Mabel Dodge slightly during her New
York year but came to know her better in New Mexico, where she moved in 1917
with her third husband, Maurice Sterne, from whom she divorced in 1922.
Mabel married Antonio Lujan, a Taos Pueblo Indian, in 1923. Thereafter she
called herself Mabel Dodge Luhan. When Cather and Edith Lewis traveled to
New Mexico in June 1925, Luhan invited Cather to visit her in Taos, seeking
advice on her manuscript memoirs of her life. Lewis and Cather’s long stay
in Taos inspired Death Comes for the Archbishop
(1927). Cather briefly returned to Luhan's Taos compound in 1926, when Luhan
was absent, and although Luhan invited Cather and Lewis back, they did not
return to New Mexico. In 1928, Cather encouraged Alfred Knopf to consider
publishing the early volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, praising them as “intensely
interesting and alive” (#2589). However, Harcourt Brace published all four
volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, Background (1933), European Experiences (1935), Movers
and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert
(1937). Cather also read the later portions in manuscript. Cather praised
Luhan’s memoir of D.H. Lawrence during his New Mexico years, Lorenzo in Taos (Knopf 1932), as “the best portrait
there ever will be of Lawrence” (#1036). Luhan lived in Taos until her
death.
Follett, Wilson (1887-1963). American editor, critic, and writer. Born in North Attleboro, MA, Follet taught English at several colleges after his 1909 graduation from Harvard University, until 1918, when he began a career in publishing, first at Yale University Press and then at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. At Knopf Follett helped to edit a novel by his twelve-year old daughter, Barbara Newhall Follett, The House Without Windows (1927), which attracted a great deal of public attention. In 1928 Follett left both Knopf and his family, working as a freelance screen-writer in Los Angeles, but he returned to Knopf by 1939. Cather told Knopf that she did not lament his departure (#2589). As a writer and critic, he published in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review. His most influential work, Modern American Usage: A Guide (1966), appeared posthumously.
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
American Mercury
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
