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 |
79533
A PUEBLO INDIAN, NEW MEXICO.
FRED HARVEY.
FRED HARVEY
POSTCARD
"PHOSTIN" CARD.
TRADEMARK-REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.
MADE ONLY BY DETROIT PUBLISHING CO.
After painting by Ferdinand Burgdorff. Of the Pueblo Indians a
well known writer has said, “The Pueblos are picturesque anywhere and always,
but particularly in their dances. These are Indians who are neither poor nor
naked; Indians who feed themselves and ask no aid from Washington; Indians who
were farmers and irrigators before the new world was discovered."
THIS SPACE MAY BE USED FOR MESSAGE
THIS SPACE FOR THE ADDRESS
Miss Elizabeth S.
Sergeant1
Medfield4
Mass.
LAMY, N. MEX2
AUG 31 1915
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0320.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0320
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, with image of Pueblo Indian in New Mexico on recto. Handwritten message on verso of postcard.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- August 31 [1915]
- Place letter was written
- Lamy, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Person Annotations
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (1881-1965). American journalist and
author. Born and raised in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston,
Elizabeth Sergeant graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. In 1910,
Pauline Goldmark sent her to Cather at McClure’s
Magazine with a proposed article, published as “Toilers of the
Tenements,” and Cather and Sergeant became lifelong friends. In 1914
Sergeant became one of the original contributors to the New Republic. While on assignment in France in 1917 she was
injured by a land mine; her injury and recuperation were the subject of Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920). She
moved to New Mexico in 1920 and became involved with the Taos artists colony
and advocated for Native American rights, but her work frequently took her
back to New York City. She included Cather in her collection of portraits of
prominent Americans, Fire under the Andes (1927).
Sergeant studied with Carl Jung and Toni Woolf in Zurich, Switzerland, from
1929 to 1931. When she returned to the U.S. she sold her house in New Mexico
and settled in New York City, writing many magazine articles about authors
and psychological topics. She later moved to Rockland County, NY. Cather’s
letters to Sergeant comment frequently on both her own and Sergeant’s
writing and testify to a strong and lively friendship maintained despite
Sergeant's being a committed reformer and far to the left of Cather
politically and culturally. Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A
Memoir (1953) includes extensive paraphrases of Cather’s letters to
her.
Place Annotations
