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 am delighted that “Grandmither”4 found her way to your attention and that you liked her. I don’t write verse very often. Miss Monroe5 put several things6 of mine into her anthology7, but they were so badly proofread8 as to be almost unintelligible.
My telephone was disconnected9 while I was away last summer, and the Company refused to connect me again this fall, as I live in the most congested telephone district. Being without one has been a real privation, and it has cut me out of a lot of good things—hearing from you, among others. I am so sorry I missed seeing you. Please let me know when you are in town2 again, and thank you so much for your friendly impulse in writing me.
Cordially yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0450.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0450
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Edgar Lee Masters1
- Date letter was written
- February 9 [1920]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the loss of Cather and Lewis's telephone at 5 Bank Street in 1919 and Cather's subsequent difficulty having the phone company rewire it (see #0480 and #0484).
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- E.L. Masters, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
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.
See #0908 for some of Cather's complaints about her poems in the anthology. There are several spelling and punctuation inconsistencies between Monroe's anthologized version of Cather's poems and the poems as later published in Cather's collection April Twilights, and Other Poems (1923).
For more on Cather's difficulties having her phone replaced, see #0480 and #0484.
Person Annotations
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.
Monroe, Harriet (1860-1936). American editor and poet.
Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago, IL, and earned a reputation as a
poet while still young. However, she soon realized how difficult it was to
make a living as a poet and worked as a journalist for many years. In 1912,
with money from a settlement and with wealthy Chicagoans as sponsors, she
launched Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, which
published, and paid fairly for, the work of poets who would become
recognized as many of the twentieth century’s best. Monroe solicited poems
by Cather for her magazine and published “Spanish Johnny” and “The Palatine”
in her anthology, New Poetry (1917), but Cather was
displeased at the typographical errors in them.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Grandmither, Think Not I Forget," Critic (April 1900) by Willa Cather
"Spanish JohnnyThe New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Willa Cather; edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson and
"The Palatine: In the "Dark Ages"," The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Willa Cather; edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson and
The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson
