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 |
When do you sail for England4? I am sending you a note from Mencken5, in answer to one I wrote him thanking him for his very amiable review6.
Do you know7 a Mr. Melchers8, of the Booksellers' Monthly9, or some such magazine. He came in here on Friday with some newspaper people from Chicago10 for the purpose of begging me to stick to the "middle West" and not to write novels about Greenwich Village2. When I told him you admired a change of scene he became very eloquent, and declared he spoke from the selling end.
How is the book11 selling12 in the West? Melchers declared it was "going strong."
Please have a copy of "Dear Folks at Home"13 sent to me, if it is any good.
Faithfully W. S. C.I think it's nice of Mencken to take so much interest.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0453.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0453
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- March 2 [1919]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters 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
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 4 March 1919, Greenslet reported that he did know Melcher and thought Cather meeting him was "good for business."
On 4 March 1919, Greenslet reported that the book was selling under 100 copies a week with total sales, including Canada, at 6300.
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.
Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956) ("H. L."). American author, editor,
and journalist. Born in Baltimore, MD, into a German immigrant
family, Henry Louis Mencken worked in his father’s cigar factory for two
years after graduating high school. At age eighteen he became a cub reporter
for the Baltimore Herald, rising quickly through the
journalistic ranks while also publishing poetry and short stories in
national magazines. He became literary editor of the Smart
Set magazine in 1909, later becoming co-editor with George Jean
Nathan, while continuing to be a prolific and bold social and literary
critic. He and Nathan founded the American Mercury
magazine in 1923. Mencken reviewed many of Cather’s novels, and she began
corresponding with him about her work early in her career as a novelist. Her
stories “Her Boss” (1919) and “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) appeared in the
Smart Set, and from 1920 Cather and Mencken
shared Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as a publisher (Mencken was a close personal
friend of both Alfred and Blanche Knopf). Mencken was one of the strongest
voices in favor of My Ántonia (1918), and Alfred
Knopf commissioned him to write an appreciation of Cather for The Borzoi 1920; however, Cather’s attempt to manage
his response to One of Ours (1922) by writing him in
advance of publication and soliciting a review failed—Mencken wrote one of
the most stingingly negative reviews of it. Mencken fell out of public favor
in the early 1930s but became popular again with the publication of his
fourth revision of The American Language in 1936,
which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. He spent the final
years of his life unable to write or speak as the result of a massive stroke
in 1948.
Melcher, Frederic Gershom (1879-1963). American bookseller and publisher. Born near Boston, MA, Frederic Melcher went to work for a Boston publisher in 1898, where he developed an interest in children’s books. In 1910 he married Marguerite Fellows, a children’s book author, and in 1913, they moved to Indianapolis, IN, where Frederick managed W. K. Stewart Bookstore. In 1918 he returned east to become editor of the trade journal Publishers’ Weekly, published in New York City, and in early 1919 he visited Willa Cather to urge her to keep writing about the West. Cather later sent greetings to Melcher through Ferris Greenslet. Melcher is best known for his efforts to promote children’s literature. In 1922 he proposed and helped to fund the Newberry Medal, awarded to the best children’s book each year; similarly, he proposed the Caldecott Medal, recognizing the best children’s picture book.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Sunrise on the Prairie: VII," Smart Set (February 1919) by H.L. Mencken
Publishers Weekly
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Dear Folks at Home - - -: The Glorious Story of the United States Marines in France as Told by their Letters from the Battlefield (1919) by Courtney Ryley Cooper and Kemper Frey Cowing
