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 |
Yes, pool4, of course. The man this was done from5 always played billiards
and the word came automatically, the moment I began to think of him. I think I would be willing to deprive Dr. Archie of the Governorship6
and make him a political dictator and the head of a big mining company. But the diminishing scale you noted7, after the
end of Part II, is really a part of the pla plan of
the book8. The latter part of the
manuscript explains tha that plan somewhat, but I
would like to talk with you about it. Can't you come to see me on Saturday or
Sunday? Send me a line giving me a hint as to when to expect you, as I have no
telephone--and shan't have until this story is done and off my mind.
Perhaps the peculiar atructure of the story would be better explained if I used a sub–title and called the book; "The Song of the Lark: The Story of an Artist's Youth9."
Faithfully Willa Cather TuesdayInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0296.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0296
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- [April 6, 1915]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Internal evidence suggests that this letter was written in response to Ferris Greenslet's letter to Willa Cather dated April 5, 1915. As Cather dates this letter Tuesday, she most likely wrote it on April 6, 1915.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
On 5 April 1915, Greenslet corrected Cather's reference in the opening line of The Song of the Lark to Dr. Archie playing billiards, saying that pool, rather than billiards, was a "four-handed" game. She made the change.
On 5 April 1915 Greenslet observed that heroes of Western novels becoming governors had become commonplace, and that Cather had not prepared readers for the transformation of Dr. Archie from small-town doctor to politician. Cather carried out the change.
On 5 April 1915 Greenslet extensively analyzed the "lack of coherence between the first and the last parts of the manuscript" and suggested cutting the length of parts I and II to make them more proportional to parts III through VI. Cather evidently persuaded him that the proportions were warranted.
This subtitle was not used.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
McKeeby, Gilbert E. (1844-1905). Red Cloud physician. Born in Ohio and reared in Wisconsin, McKeeby served in the Civil War and afterwards studied medicine. He married Carrie Ansdell in 1868; they had two children, Fred and Lucille. In 1882 the family came to Red Cloud, NE, where McKeeby was active politically, being elected mayor in 1887 and state senator in 1894. He also edited the Red Cloud Republican from June 1889 until the paper folded. In 1897 the McKeebys moved to Oklahoma and later to Pueblo, CO, where he died. Cather portrayed him as Dr. Archie in The Song of the Lark (1915).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
