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 |
? yes Mr. Saxton December 8th My Dear Mr. Scaife1;
Will you please find out for me whether copies of "Antonia"3 were mailed to The New Republic4 and to H. W. Boynton5 of the Bookman?6
I wonder what you have decided7 about Albertieri's8 book on the Ballet9. He was feeling downcast about it last winter. He put really more money than he could afford into having a good translation made. I do think it an excellent translation, but it meant a heavy outlay of money for him. His best pupils, as a rule, are so poor they can't pay him much of anything, and he understands very little about business matters. If you can hold out any hope to him, it would be cheering to him if you dropped him a line. Perhaps you have done so; I have not been to see him for nearly a year.
Very sincerely yours Willa S. Cather Better give it upRLS
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0444.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0444
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roger L. Scaife1
- Date letter was written
- December 8 [1918]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters to Cather from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- 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
See #0384. On 13 December 1918 Greenslet responded that Albertieri's book was not "a sound publishing investment" for the coming year. It was ultimately published by G. Ricordi of New York.
Person Annotations
Scaife, Roger Livingston (1875-1951). Head of publicity at Houghton Mifflin. An 1897 graduate of Harvard University, Scaife went to work for Houghton Mifflin in 1898 as assistant to Azaria Smith, head of the publicity department. Scaife subsequently assumed Smith’s position and became a shareholder of the corporation and secretary of the board of directors. In 1910, when Ferris Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Scaife divided his shares 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. Scaife anonymously published three satirical novels with Houghton Mifflin, The Confessions of a Debutante (1913), Cape Codities (1920), and The Reflections of a T.B.M. (1920), and two books of children’s verse under his own name. Cather corresponded primarily with Greenslet about her novels, but in his absence she dealt with Scaife during the production of My Ántonia (1918), and her dissatisfaction with decisions made on his authority contributed to her decision to transfer her publishing business to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. In 1934 Scaife left Houghton Mifflin to become executive vice president of Little, Brown. He later became the fourth director of Harvard University Press.
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.
Albertieri, Luigi (1869-1930). Italian-American dancer, dance
teacher, and choreographer. Born in Rome, Italy, Luigi
Albertieri was trained as a dancer by his adoptive father, Enricho
Cecchetti, with whom he toured in Europe and Russia. After living and
performing in London, England, he came to the U.S. in 1894 and danced with
the Metropolitan Opera company in New York City. He was ballet master of the
Opera of Chicago from 1910 and of the Metropolitan Opera from 1913. He
opened his own school in New York City in 1915. Cather likely met him when
she was researching “Training for the Ballet” (McClure’s
Magazine October 1913), in which he is featured. She attempted
unsuccessfully in 1917-1918 to persuade Houghton Mifflin to publish his The Art of Terpsichore.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
New Republic
Bookman
The Art of Terpsichore: An Elementary, Theoretical, Physical, and Practical Treatise of Dancing (1923) by Luigi Albertieri
