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 |
44-60 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
NEW YORK EDITORIAL ROOMS November 15, 1909. My dear Mr. Lowell1:
Mr. McClure3 has been wanting for a long time to get some of your work into the magazine4. You used to do a good deal for him and he was always particularly partial to it. Some rumour has reached us of late that youdo not wish to do any work for McClure’s, and if that is true we are all very sorry for it. I hope, however, that this is a mistake, or at least, that if you have any unfriendly feeling toward the magazine it could be dispelled by a conversation. Would it be possible for you to come into the office some morning and have a talk with me? We have some stories in hand which we would very much like to put into your hands.
Very sincerely yours, Willa Sibert Catherfor
Mr. S. S. McClure Mr. Orson Lowell, 35 West 21st St., New York2.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0165.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0165
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Orson Lowell 1
- Date letter was written
- November 15, 1909
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Person Annotations
Lowell, Orson (1871-1956). American Illustrator. Lowell’s
father, painter Milton Lowell, moved his family from Iowa to Chicago in
1882. Orson Lowell studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to
New York City in 1893, where he soon became a successful illustrator for
magazines, books, and advertisements, mostly in pen and ink. As an editor of
McClure’s, Cather invited him to do more work for
the magazine.
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
