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 YORK.2 May fifteenth 1911. Dear Mr. Walker1:
I am sending you this note by boy, for the case I wish to bring before you is really an emergency case - actually a shipwreck. Mr. William Archer4 went to Mexico5 some weeks ago to do an article for us on the Mexican situation6. He returned by way of the Merida; at least he returned on her a part of the way. The enclosed letter will show you the predicament he is in. If you can dictate some sort of a letter or opinion, and send it to me by messenger as quickly as possible, I will forward it to Mr. Archer.
Very sincerely yours, Willa Sibert Cather Mr. Roberts Walker, 115 Broadway, City2.Enc.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0193.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0193
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, tyepwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roberts Walker1
- Date letter was written
- May 15, 1911
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- McClure mss., 1865-1949 (LMC 1687), Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, IN
Individual Annotations
The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and continued through 1920. No article by William Archer on Mexico appeared in McClure's, however.
Person Annotations
Walker, Roberts (1874-1926). American attorney. Born and raised in Rutland, VT, Roberts Walker graduated from Amherst College in 1896 and Columbia Law School in 1899. Until 1911, he was a lawyer for the Rock Island Railway, but in 1912 he joined the New York law firm of White & Case. Cather corresponded with him in 1911 about legal matters concerning William Archer’s work on assignment in Mexico for McClure’s Magazine.
Archer, William (1856-1924). Scottish writer, critic, and translator.
Born in Perth, Scotland, William Archer spent several years of his
childhood in Norway with his grandparents, who had settled there; his
knowledge of Norwegian later enabled him to make his influential
translations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. Archer began his career in journalism
while studying at Edinburgh University. Moving to London around 1879, he
became a drama critic and translated Ibsen’s Pillars of
Society and arranged for its first English production in 1880. A
champion of modern dramatists such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and
J.M. Synge, Archer opposed censorship in the theater. However, during World
War I, he worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau. Cather knew of
Archer’s translations of Ibsen while she was at the University of Nebraska
in the 1890s; she met Archer in 1908 on a visit to London for McClure’s Magazine, which commissioned articles from
him. Although no correspondence between Cather and Archer has been located,
she counted him as a friend and recounted their friendship in a letter to
Ferris Greenslet (#1458).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
