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 TWENTY-THIRD STREET
NEW YORK2 August twenty-fourth 1911. Dear Mr. Dwight1:
I do think this poem truly beautiful. It is one of the loveliest I have read in a long time. I am glad to have had a chance to read it, even though this is the wrong shop for it. We never publish verse longer than a page, and it is only two or three times a year that what we call a "page poem" gets into the Magazine3.
I am wondering whether I shall see you again before you sail. This has been a rather terrible summer for me, as I have had to be in town2 during all the hot weather. I am going away now on the twenty-eighth of September for a vacation of six whole months, and that ought to put me right with the world I think. I have needed a long vacation for several years now, and I am so happy that it is all arranged at last. If you are in town before that date, I hope you can drop in for a few minutes.
Very sincerely yours, Willa Sibert Cather Mr. H. G. Dwight, Ellsworth4, Me.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0202.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0202
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Harrison G. Dwight 1
- Date letter was written
- August 24, 1911
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Harrison Griswold Dwight (AC 1898) Papers, 1890-1959 (MA.00012), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, MA
Person Annotations
Dwight, Harrison Griswold (1875-1959). American writer and diplomat.
Dwight was born in Constantinople, Turkey, to a missionary family.
His early education was abroad, but he graduated from Amherst College in
Amherst, MA, in 1898. He joined the consular service and later worked as a
translator during World War I. Cather apparently met him in 1906 in
connection with editorial work at McClure’s Magazine.
Cather and Dwight occasionally met socially; he apparently also knew
Cather’s Pittsburgh friends, Mary and May Willard. Her letters often report
her reactions to his work, including Stamboul Nights
(1916), which drew on his experience in the Middle East.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
