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 YORK2 May thirteenth 1911. Dear Professor Münsterberg1:
Mr. McClure4 has written you as to how he feels about the four articles you have sent us. We all feel that these are too much in the nature of essays for us. You will remember that when we discussed a plan5 for these articles last summer we rejected several subjects, among them the German theater, because they would necessarily work out in the form of essays instead of articles.
Mr. McClure has been hoping to get some articles on Germany6 from you that would set people thinking, and arouse a wholly new interest in many German methods which he believes to be highly superior to ours. Mr. McClure thinks that I probably made a mistake in urging you to let us have the copy as soon as possible. He says that perhaps when you return to this country7 you will be able to shape what you have to say on Germany to meet exactly the needs of the hour. However that may be, I hope you will feel some sympathy with his idea, and find it possible to give us some of the material that Mr. McClure feels is so important. Perhaps if we were to let the matter go until you return to this country, it might be easier to come to an exact understanding about it.
Very cordially yours, Willa Sibert Cather Professor Hugo Münsterberg, Berlin, Germany8.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0192.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0192
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Hugo Münsterberg 1
- Date letter was written
- May 13, 1911
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Hugo Munsterberg Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA
Individual Annotations
See #0174.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
