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 |
Nothing terrifies me in the statement4
except the item $166.73 for excess proof corrections! I had expected that excess
corrections would run to about $50, but, behold, they amount to about 14% of the
royalties on the book! This is not a protest but a lamentation. To offset this
misfortune, I think you have allowed me a larger royalty than I expected. I did not
know that I was to get as Mmuch as 21% until after 12000 copies had
been sold. I am glad the book5 is still selling. Of
course, for on your account as well as on my own, I
would like to be as live a proposition as, say, Mrs.
Porter6. But neither for your sake nor for my sake would I, even if I could, produce that product for
which our public is so eager. Have you seen Mr.
Boynton's7
article8 in the Nation9
April 6th? It's that kind of feeling that one wants to stir up in people, after all;
and one can't, as the London10 flower girl said, jolly well have
everything. Let me know if you've not seen Boynton's article.
I'm delighted to have the check. This has been a rotten winter and I've got practically no work done. I'll hit the trail again, though, with a good many new notions in my pate, and I hope I can hold your interest yet awhile.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0356.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0356
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- May 2 [1916]
- 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 29 April 1916 Greenslet sent Cather's semi-annual copyright statement and $500 "on account" (royalties were not due until September 1). Reporting that 7500 copies of The Song of the Lark had been distributed, he hoped that she would not find sales "disappointing."
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.
Porter, Eleanor Hodgman (1868-1920). American novelist. Born
in New Hampshire, Eleanor Hodgman trained as a singer at the New England
Conservatory of Music. After her marriage to John Lyman Porter in 1892, she
began publishing short stories for children and adults; her first novel
appeared in 1907. Her first successful book, Miss
Billy (1911), was quickly followed by the enormously successful Pollyanna (1913) and Pollyanna
Grows Up (1915), with five other best-sellers published before her
death. Porter’s novels were published by Houghton Mifflin, as were Cather’s
first four novels.
Boynton, H. W. (1869-1947). American critic. Connecticut-born Henry Walcott Boynton received his BA and MA from Amherst College in Massachusetts and taught English at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA from 1892 to 1901. He reviewed books for the Atlantic Monthly from 1901 to 1904, for the Nation and the New York Evening Post from 1912, and for Bookman from 1915. Cather was particularly pleased with his reviews of O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), writing him to thank him particularly for his review of The Song of the Lark, and inviting him to her Friday teas. Boynton also edited volumes of American and British classic works.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
"Realism and Recent American Fiction," Nation (April 1916) by H. W. Boynton
Nation
