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 |
Can you come to dine with me here3 on Saturday, May 6th, at 7 oclock? Then we can arrange a time when you can bring your friends, whom I should be so glad to meet. Why do you think I am so apt to hate people? Just now I don't hate anyone on earth but Edgar Lee Masters4, the old mutt-owl!
Yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0357.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0357
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Harrison G. Dwight 1
- Date letter was written
- [May 4, 1916]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather asks Dwight to dine with her on Saturday, May 6, meaning that the Thursday she wrote the letter was May 4. In addition to the alignment of these days and dates with 1916, the content aligns with #0361, written in July 1916.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Harrison Griswold Dwight Papers, 1890-1959 (MA.00012), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, 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.
Person Annotations
Dwight, Harrison Griswold (1875-1959). American writer and diplomat.
Dwight was born in Constantinople, Turkey, to a missionary family.
His early education was abroad, but he graduated from Amherst College in
Amherst, MA, in 1898. He joined the consular service and later worked as a
translator during World War I. Cather apparently met him in 1906 in
connection with editorial work at McClure’s Magazine.
Cather and Dwight occasionally met socially; he apparently also knew
Cather’s Pittsburgh friends, Mary and May Willard. Her letters often report
her reactions to his work, including Stamboul Nights
(1916), which drew on his experience in the Middle East.
Masters, Edgar Lee (1868-1950). American poet and writer.
Born in Kansas, Masters grew up in Lewiston, IL, near the Spoon
River which lent its name to his most famous work, the Spoon River Anthology (1915). He began practicing law in Chicago,
IL, in 1893, for a time in partnership with Clarence Darrow. He wrote poetry
on the side, at first under pseudonyms; in all he published more than two
dozen volumes of verse. Masters also published biographies of Lincoln,
Whitman, Twain, and others. Cather disliked his poetry, but responded
cordially when he wrote to her.
Place Annotations
