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 a hasty first cast at the Epilogue4, which will
be rather casual and not more conclusive than this first draft. I begin to feel as
Stevenson5 did about his wife6 and The Black Arrow7, when he waited
in vain for it to take hold of her8. I have a mournful conviction that you
do not get what you look for from this book, and that you find it eccentric and
unsatisfying. I would do almost anything to pleae
please you, except change the story, which I can't do. If you feel reluctant about
publishing it, there is still time to call it off. I am sure that if you can give
it
an approving push at the start, it will make its way to a good many people. If it
doesn't, and I am mistaken, then you will have a right to be severe with me. I hate
to feel that I am not living up to your expectations, but I feel so much more
confidence in this book than I did in the other9.
If you go ahead with this, will you please make a note that I am to have three pulls of each galley proof? I always use two in correcting, and one is to go to a musical expert10.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0300.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0300
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- April 28 [1915]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Internal evidence suggests that this letter is discussing The Song of the Lark, indicating that it was written in 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.
Cather seems to have a confused memory of Stevenson's preface to The Black Arrow addressed to "To the Critic on the Hearth" (his wife), in which he wrote, "I have watched with interest, with pain, and at length amusement your unavailing attempts to peruse The Black Arrow; and I think I should lack humour indeed if I let the occasion slip and did not place your name on the fly-leaf of the only book of mine that you have never read--and never will read."
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.
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894). Scottish writer. Born in
Edinburgh, Scotland, Stevenson refused to allow his always fragile health to
suppress his adventurous spirit. After taking a law degree, he lived and
traveled in France, where in 1876 he met his future wife, a married
American, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, in 1876. They were married in 1880, and
he produced his best-known works—Treasure
Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1886)—in the years that followed. In 1888 he set sail for the South
Seas, settling on the Samoan island of Upolo in 1890, where he died and is
buried. Cather admired Stevenson’s writing, discussing him in her journalism
in the 1890s, and cherished her “Thistle Edition” of Stevenson’s collected
works, published from 1895-1899 by Scribner’s.
Stevenson, Frances Vandegrift Osbourne (1840-1914) (“Fanny”). Wife of
Robert Louis Stevenson. Born in Indianapolis, IN, in 1857 Fanny
married Lt. Samuel Osbourne, who went west to the mining fields of
California and Nevada after the Civil War. Although she made an arduous trip
through the Isthmus of Panama to join him, the couple separated in 1875.
Fanny and their three children went to Paris, France, where she met Robert
Louis Stevenson, whose work she encouraged. When she returned to California,
Stevenson saved for three years before he could afford to join her in 1879.
She divorced Osbourne and married Stevenson in 1880. After years of looking
for a climate suited to Stevenson’s frail health, they sailed to Samoa in
1888. After Stevenson’s death in 1894, Fanny Stevenson returned to
California, where she died; her ashes were interred in Samoa beside her
husband’s. Cather met Fanny Stevenson at the home of S.S. McClure in New
York in 1903.
Keeble, Glendinning (1887-1947). American teacher and critic. Glendinning Keeble was born and reared in Pittsburgh, PA, and studied music in New York City and Paris, France. Returning to Pittsburgh, he became art and music critic for the Pittsburgh Times Gazette while still in his early 20s. In 1914 he became lecturer in music and music history in the College of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He continued to write for the newspaper and in 1937 became director of the College of Fine Arts. Cather probably did not know him while she lived in Pittsburgh but may have met him later through Isabelle McClung. She asked him to critique the musical portions of The Song of the Lark (1915) for accuracy.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
The Black Arrow: A Tale of Two Roses (1888) by Robert Louis Stevenson
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
