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 |
For years one of my chief jobs at McClure's3 was wriggling—not always gracefully—out of rash agreements that S. S.4 had made with Curtis Brown5 and Massey6. One wriggle was to get out of serializing a book by Massey's octogenarian wife7, for which treachery he hates me right heartily. I don't believe he will do much8 for the book9. And Curtis Brown himself handles only plays, I believe, leaving the rest of the business entirely in Massey's hands; at least, this was true five years ago.
I think only young people will really like this book. I wish there were some way of advertising it in women's colleges. I
think the un–sentimental sort of success, the kind won hand–over fist, particularly
appeals to the college girls just now, that it
happens to be the fashion. Would there be anything in advert advertising in college papers? I think the very thing that made
your book–buyer reduce his order will make young people read it if they know about
it. The girls all want that combative, defiant sort of career. It's in the air. If
you can think of some direct way to get at Smith and Barnard and Radcliffe10 etc, I will do anything I can to help
you.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0324.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0324
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- September 26 [1915]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 22 September 1915 Greenslet reported that Heinemann had declined to publish The Song of the Lark in London and that he had instructed Heinemann to send it to the Curtis Brown agency to place with another British publisher.
Smith College, Barnard College, and Radcliffe College were all part of the "Seven Sisters" group of private women's colleges in the Northeastern U.S.
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.
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Brown, Albert Curtis (1866-1945) (“Curtis”). Anglo-American journalist and literary agent. Born in upstate New York, Albert Curtis Brown worked as a journalist in Buffalo, NY, and New York City before moving to England in 1898 to head the International Publishing Bureau, a literary agency. In 1906 he and Hughes Massie left this firm to establish Curtis Brown and Massie, literary and dramatic publishing agents. Cather had dealings with this firm when she was an editor at McClure’s Magazine. In 1913 Massie and Brown parted ways, and Curtis Brown continued on under his own name. Houghton Mifflin engaged the firm to handle negotiations for British publication and some European translations of Cather’s works.
Massie, Hughes (1876-1921). Canadian-American literary agent. Born in Ontario, Canada, Hughes Massie graduated from Cornell University in 1901. He married the widowed Effie Dunreith Gluck, in 1904, and they moved to London, England, in 1905, where he worked for the International Publishing Bureau. In 1906 he and Curtis Brown left the firm to establish their own agency, Curtis Brown and Massie, literary and dramatic publishing agents. Cather had dealings with this firm when she was an editor at McClure’s Magazine. In 1913 he parted ways with Brown and established his own agency, Hughes Massie and Company.
Massie, Effie Dunreith Tyler Gluck (1858-1932). American author. Born in Illinois, Effie Dunreith Tyler moved with her family to Ithaca, NY, where her father, Charles D. Tyler, was a professor of Christian Ethics and Philosophy at Cornell University. She married lawyer James Fraser Gluck in 1877, and they had two children before his 1897 death. In 1904 she married Hughes Massie, and in 1905 moved with him to England. She published poetry in magazines and in 1911 translated Wagner at Home by Judith Gautier. She died in Los Angeles, CA.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
