Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 YORK2 March fourth 1910. Dear Prof. Munsterberg1:
Mr. McClure4 telegraphs me from the West that he is very anxious to get you to do some articles on Germany5 while you are abroad this coming winter. Either Mr. McClure or I will be in Boston6 within the next two weeks, and would like to see you about it then. I am writing to you in the meantime to ask you not to make arrangements to write for any other publication until we have had an opportunity to present our plans to you. For a long time Mr. McClure has been anxious to get some competent person to write upon Germany's management of her railroads, the much discussed German Mayor's system, and several other subjects relating to Germany's political and commercial life.
Mr. McClure was very much disappointed that we did not get your article7 on Eusapia8. He was abroad at the time himself and he thought the rest of us very stupid that we did not make some arrangement with you. We were all very much chagrined at missing it.
Very cordially yours, Willa Sibert Cather Prof. Hugo Munsterberg, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.9Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0170.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0170
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Hugo Münsterberg 1
- Date letter was written
- March 4, 1910
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Hugo Münsterberg Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA
Person Annotations
Münsterberg, Hugo (1863-1916). German-American psychologist. Born in Danzig, Prussia, into a cultured merchant family, Hugo Münsterberg earned his PhD from the University of Leipzig in 1885 and his medical degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1887. William James invited him to come teach at Harvard University in 1892. Münsterberg’s work in applied psychology, particularly forensic psychology, made him well known in the U.S.; he often published articles in McClure’s and other popular magazines. However, as World War I began, his defense of Germany led to a loss of reputation. Cather corresponded with him in 1910 and 1911 concerning articles articles on Germany McClure’s proposed he write but that were ultimately not published in 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.
Palladino, Eusapia (1854-1918). Italian physical medium. Born in southern Italy, Eusapia Palladino married a travelling conjuror, Raphael Delgaiz, while in her teens. By 1872, she had become well known in Europe as a medium, famous for levitating tables and moving other objects, playing musical instruments without touching them, and causing materializations. Even skeptics and conjurors thought some of her phenomena had to be genuine, although she was sometimes found to be, and sometimes even admitted to, cheating. She was brought to the U.S. in November 1909, where admission to her seances was $250 a person. Well-known psychology professor Hugo Münsterburg attended one and wrote an exposé, published in the Metropolitan Magazine in 1910; the exposé was widely reported on and contributed to the decline of her fame.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
"My Friends the Spiritualists: Some Theories and Conclusions Concerning Eusapia Palladino," Metropolitan Magazine (1910), by Hugo Münsterberg
