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 |
How gracious you were to write me about the little
volume4 I sent you5. I shall
be so glad to go to see you when I am next in Boston6, if I may. I used to hear so much of you when I was staying visiting Mrs.
Fields7 on Charles street8
and at Manchester9. If I go to visit
Sarah Doris10, I shall ask her to take me
to see you.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0301.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0301
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Edith Forbes Perkins 1
- Date letter was written
- April 29 [1915]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather inscribed a copy of April Twilights to Edith Forbes Perkins on April 1, 1915, and in this letter Cather is responding to Perkins's acknowledgment of the volume, thus establishing the year of the letter
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Benjamin D. Hitz Papers, 1913-1949 (Midwest.MS.Hitz-Cather), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
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 inscribed a copy of April Twilights to Perkins on 1 April 1915.
148 Charles Street (Boston, MA): Home occupied by James T. Fields and Annie Adams Fields beginning in 1856, when it was still number 37 on Charles Street. After James’ death in 1881, Sarah Orne Jewett moved into the house with Annie Fields, and the two women continued to entertain authors and artists as the Fieldses did during their marriage. Cather met the two of them in 1908 and wrote about her experience in “The House on Charles Street,” later revised as “148 Charles Street” in Not Under Forty (1936). Compliant with Annie Adams Fields’ will, the building was torn down after her death in 1915.
Person Annotations
Perkins, Edith Forbes (1843-1925) ("Mrs. C. E."). Cather’s Boston acquaintance. Edith Forbes was born in Massachusetts; her father made his fortune in the China and opium trades; her uncle, John Murray Forbes, became president of the Burlington Railroad. She married a cousin, Charles E. Perkins, who rose to become president of the Burlington Railroad in 1881. Cather met Mrs. Perkins and her daughter Alice Perkins Hooper in Boston, MA, c. 1908, and the Perkins may have been models for the railroad president Mr. Ogden and his wife in Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923).
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.
Dorris, Sarah Harris (1862-1918). American newspaper editor. Born in Massachusetts, Sarah came to Lincoln, NE, in 1870 with her parents, railroad land agent George B. Harris and his wife Sarah. She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1888. After several years in Lincoln’s social scene, she became associated with the Lincoln Courier, a weekly newspaper. Cather, who knew Harris socially, was briefly Harris’s coeditor in the fall of 1895. After Cather moved to Pittsburgh, PA, in 1896, she contributed reviews, columns, and stories to the Courier, and she stopped in Lincoln to visit Harris occasionally on her way to and from Red Cloud. In August 1903, Cather met Edith Lewis, who also wrote for the Courier, at Harris’s house. Sarah Harris married retired surgeon Alvah H. Dorris in 1907, several years after she sold the newspaper.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
