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 |
(FOUNDED 1767) PLAINFIELD PLAIN2 NEW HAMPSHIRE Saturday My Dear Norman1
I liked the paper5 on White6 so much. It's so limpid and clear and admirable in feeling, and not one bit sententious. I don't find a trace of your old fearfully involved and complicated sentence structure, and I dont find a trace of the baffling wooliness of most young men who think they tend toward Pater7. (As for Pater, let us admire him too much to imitate him.) I am so pleased that you have simplified and are coming out this way. I wouldn't be afraid to ask you to do a plain and simple piece of writing like the Brashear article8. I don't believe now that you'd try to work off any Swinburnian9 prose apropos of a plain man. I am so glad it's all coming out this way!
Congratulations and good wishes Willa Sibert Cather Mr. Norman Foerster1 Holsworthy Hall Harvard College Cambridge3 Mass. WINDSOR VT.4 JUL 24 1910 3 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0183.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0183
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Norman Foerster1
- Date letter was written
- [July 24, 1910]
- Place letter was written
- Plainfield, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collected Materials (MS008), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Person Annotations
Foerster, Norman (1887-1972). American literary scholar.
Norman Foerster was born in Pittsburgh, PA; he was one of Cather’s
students when she taught English at Central High School in Pittsburgh. He
went on to receive his A.B. from Harvard in 1910 and his MA from the
University of Wisconsin in 1912. He taught English at the universities of
Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa, as well as at Duke University. Foerster
was a part of the neohumanist movement, along with Irving Babbitt and Paul
Elmer More. He wrote often about the role of higher education as well as
about American literature. His book, Toward Standards
(1930) was dedicated to Cather and to Robert Frost. Cather corresponded with
him occasionally about his work.
White, Gilbert (1720-1793). English naturalist and clergyman. Educated at Basingstoke and Oriel College, Oxford, White was ordained in 1746 and became curate of the Selborne parish. A passionate gardener, he kept a daily record of his activities and observations, which became the basis for A Calendar of Flora and the Garden (1765). His most famous book is the classic, The History and Antiquities of Selbourne (1789), in which White promoted fieldwork as a way to study living wildlife. Because of his contributions to natural history, White is considered the first ecologist.
Pater, Walter (1839-1894). English essayist and critic. Born near London and orphaned at an early age, Pater graduated from Queen’s College, Oxford and held a fellowship at Brasenose College. Best known for his essays collected in Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and Marius the Epicurean (1885), Pater advocated “art for art’s sake” and was a key early figure in the Aesthetic movement, influencing both Oscar Wilde and George Moore. Cather considered Pater a fine critic but discouraged others from emulating his style (#0183).
Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). British poet and critic.
Born to a British naval officer and an aristocratic mother,
Swinburne was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. Influenced by
the Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne was early recognized as a major poetic talent
but was also criticized for tackling controversial political and sexual
themes. Cather first read Swinburne as a teenager in Red Cloud, NE, and in
1896 in the Home Journal, she wrote that “the man who
wrote ‘Atalanta in Calydon’,” the 1865 poem that made Swinburne famous, was
“the only English living poet who really deserved” to be British poet
laureate, but she conceded he was “shut out on erotic grounds.”
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Gilbert White of Selborne," Harvard Monthly (July 1910) by Norman Foerster
"John A. Brashear of Pittsburgh," McClure's Magazine (April 1911) by Edwin Tenney Brewster
