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 |
Here is an interesting sketch of the man whose Shakespearian criticism we each enjoyed so much. I am just back from another week up in the French and Bohemian country where the harvesters are still3 "reaping late and reaping early"4 and the wheat fields stretch for miles and miles. There is a big Catholic church up there5, the church of Saint Anne, set upon a hill like the churches of the old world, and you can see it for six level miles across the wheat fields. I heard a beautiful service there6, all in French, with excellent music.
How I should love to go to you in September, but I fear that I shall not be able to get to you then. I must fall to work7 the moment I reach Pittsburgh8 and shall probably be glued to the desk until the first of October. I am very well and gay and am enjoying the days as they go by, and am thinking very lovingly of you.
Devotedly WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0240.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0240
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Annie Adams Fields 1
- Date letter was written
- July 24, 1912
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- James Thomas Fields papers and addenda, 1767-1914 (mssFI), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Individual Annotations
Cather slightly misquotes Tennyson's poem, in which "The reader, reaping late and early" hears the Lady of Shallot "ever chanting cheerly."
In Part IV ("The White Mulberry Tree") of O, Pioneers!, Cather depicts a Catholic service at Sainte-Agnès. The French-speaking settlers in Franklin County, NE, who were members of St. Anne's church were French Canadian.
Cather was writing O, Pioneers! (1913).
Person Annotations
Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social
reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields,
partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before
and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important
American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in
Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were
published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148
Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in
1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay
reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of
selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay,
retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under
Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which
included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would
become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Lady of Shallott, The" (1832) by Alfred Tennyson
