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 |
I return M. Conard's4 contract herewith and think it a good proposition5.
Surely, I'll be glad to take the reduced royalties on "O Pioneers!"6 sold to Soldiers Libraries7.
I'm so sorry I was fussy about about the date of the
statement from the business office. I'll try to make your date for spring
publication, but I can't tell you surely for about a month from now.
The Century8 people begin the series "Office Wives"9 in January. They want the book rights also. I don't imagine you will mind, as there is not much money in a book of short stories, and this series would not be ready for book publication until next fall. I told Doty10 I thought they could have the book all right, but I did not absolutely promise. At least, I don't think I did.
Do let me know when you come to New York2. I want very much to talk to you about the physical make-up of the next book. I want to try something a trifle new in color of the binding and jacket. I am going to ask Benda11 to dinner and talk to him about head and tail-pieces. If he doesn't get the idea, no one else would, and I'd rather go un-illustrated.
The truth is, I've tried to make my own head12 and tail-pieces13 in the text itself, and unless the artist can echo them, I'd rather not.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0394.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0394
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 18, 1917
- 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 15 October 1917 Greenslet forwarded a contract from "M. Conard, the French publisher for the Continental rights" for Cather's books. He conceded Conard's terms were not "magnificent," but he noted the French publisher hoped to step into the breach left by the German publisher Tauchnitz, which had long published special editions of British and American works for English readers on the Continent.
On 16 October 1917 Greenslet reported that O Pioneers! was on the preliminary list created by the American Library Association for inclusion in the Soldiers' Libraries. Houghton Mifflin planned to discount their regular wholesale rate by half for such books and expected authors to share the reduced margin.
Imagined as a book of short stories featuring tales of women in office settings, "Office Wives" was never published as a collection. Three stories intended for such a collection were published in magazines: "The Bookeeper's Wife" (1916), "Ardessa" (1918), and "Her Boss" (1919).
Decoration printed at the blank space at the beginning of a chapter or other part of a book.
Small decorative design at the end of a work or a chapter of a work.
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.
Conard, Louis (1867-1904). French publisher. Louis Conard founded the publishing firm bearing his name in Paris, France, in 1902. In 1917 Conard created the Standard Collection of the Latest Copyrighted Works by British and American Authors to compete with a long-established similar series by German publisher Tauchnitz. Despite Conard’s 1917 offer of a contract for European publication of Cather’s works in this series, no Cather titles appeared under his imprint.
Doty, Douglas Zabriskie (1874-1935). American editor and writer.
Born in New York City, Doty graduated from Columbia University in
1897. He published widely in magazines, and beginning c. 1914 served as
editor of the Century Magazine and secretary of the
Century Co. Through agent Paul Reynolds, Cather sold several stories to the
Century, and Doty proposed that the Century Co.
would publish her story collection Office Wives, but
the project fizzled out. In 1917 Doty left the Century to edit Cosmopolitan Magazine, and
in 1918 left for Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter and script
doctor.
Benda, W. T. (1873-1948) ("Wladyslaw Theodor") . Polish-born
American graphic artist. Born in Poland, W.T. Benda studied art
in Krakow and in Vienna, Austria. In 1899, he came to the U.S. to visit his
aunt, actress Helena Modjeska, and worked on her ranch in California until
1902, when he moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League.
He became well known for his illustrations appearing in both books and
leading magazines, including McClure's during
Cather's editorship there. He was particularly known for his
charcoal-and-wash drawings of exotic beauties known as “Benda women.”
Naturalized as an American citizen in 1911, Benda married Romola Campfield,
with whom he had two daughters, and lived the rest of his life in New York.
Willa Cather chose Benda to illustrate My Ántonia
(1918), and the payment for and number of these illustrations became a
source of conflict with publisher Houghton Mifflin.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
Century Magazine
