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 |
Excuse my delay in replying to your kind and friendly letter3. For ten days now the town2 has been full of returned Nebraska boys4, and, quite aside from the fact that it is a great and exhausting pleasure for me to be with them, they are just now rather distinctly mon affair5.
I now feel quite satisfied about the charge6 for proof corrections. I am perfectly willing to stand
half of it, as I think that is an entirely fair distribution. I was right7 about Drieeiser8, however, for
I have since inquired of his publisher.
Yes9, on the whole, I think we
had better have a talk about some of these details when it is possible. I
have decided not to sign p up with anybody
until the fall. I am leaving for Toronto10 tomorrow to spend a month or more with the
Hambourgs11. Later I may
be in Jaffrey12 for a few weeks later
in the summer before I go West. I expect to spend September and October in
Red Cloud13.
The discouraging thing I get from your
letter14 is that Houghton Mifflin, having already handled my books
in the way they think adequate, would probably do m
not more for them in the future than n
in the past. I think, on the other hand, that among the people who form
opinion, I have a very different position from that which I had five years
ago, and that this fact, for a publicity department interested in such
things, makes me a very different business proposition. I am also writing
better than I was then, considerably better, which at least is a feature in
the case. The publisher here15 of whom
I have been thinking favorably, told me frankly that it was a deciding fact in the case
a deciding fact in the case with him, and that
he wanted "somebody who could do that kind of work and keep it up", and that
my three
books16, read one after another, had convinced him that I could
keep it up. In other words, he wants my "distinction" enough to take risk
and trouble for it, while Houghton Mifflin have plenty of distinction, past
and inherited, and for the last six years they have been out for quite
another sort of bird, in fiction, at least.
By the way, have you read Overton's17
amusing book18 on authorines? Voila
ces dames! He wriggles and lies like a gentleman, and the Worst of the
Virtuous Tribe he lets speak for themselves----don't they do it, thought! but I thought him [illegible] about no
who[?] the [illegible]
I am returning some of the documents19 you sent me. Do you know what Swedish firm are translating "O Pioneers!"? Wonderful punctuation! I hope you'll have a fine fishing trip. Nobody20 shall see Claude21 until fall. He22 is getting big enough to look after himself. Frankly, I won't hand him over to anybody who won't do a good deal for him.
Faithfully yours W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0464.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0464
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- May 30 [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
On 20 May 1919, Greenslet acknowledged #0461, promising a fuller response after he had investigated her questions, which he did on 23 May 1919. Cather responds selectively to Greenslet's defense of Houghton Miffln.
Returned from Europe, where they had fought in World War I.
Translation: my affair (French).
On 23 May 1919, Greenslet provided an extended explanation of the actual costs of composition and proof correction of My Ántonia and explained Houghton Mifflin's policy. He apologized for failing to examine the charges thoroughly before charging them against her royalties and proposed that she pay half, as was the firm's policy for an author who was "an honest craftsman, not merely a fussy fidler."
On 23 May 1919, Greenslet responded to Cather's report that Theodore Dreiser's publisher did not charge him for extensive proof corrections by explaining that he had been given special treatment by a publisher who "competed for his work...rather than with an eye on the principle of what is fair to all."
On 23 May 1919, Greenslet proposed that he come to New York City to discuss her grievances against Houghton Mifflin in person.
In his 23 May 1919 letter, Greenslet vigorously defended Houghton Mifflin's use of reviews in jacket copy and in advertising and the firm's advertising of Cather's novels generally. He also wrote that he himself believed that "if [she] were to go over" to one of the publishers she reported talking to she "would in the end go worse."
With his letter of 23 May 1919, Greenslet enclosed a copy of an "Inter-Departmental Memorandum" about the proof corrections to My Ántonia, a duplicate of the Riverside Press bill for the charges, a copy of his memorandum to the copyright department asking them to send a revised statement, and a clipping of an article from Reedy's Mirror by Henry Melcher that "has some bearing" on Houghton Mifflin's practice of keeping booksellers well stocked with its titles.
On 23 May 1919, Greenslet had asked that Cather let Houghton Mifflin see as much of her novel-in-progress as she had written so that they could tell her what they would do for it in terms of publicity.
Cather is referring to her novel-in-progress by the name of its title character, Claude Wheeler.
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.
Dreiser, Theodore (1871-1945). American author. Born Hermann Theodore Dreiser in Terre Haute, IN, to Johann Paul Dreiser and Sarah Schänäb, Theodore Dreiser grew up in poverty. Even though he did not graduate high school, he attended Indiana University for one year. In 1892 he became a reporter, writing for the Chicago Globe, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the St. Louis Republic, and the Pittsburgh Dispatch. In 1897 he began freelancing for magazines. Best known as an author of naturalist novels, his first novel, Sister Carrie, was published by Doubleday Page in 1900, after he substantially revised it and Doubleday almost backed out of its commitment to publish it on moral grounds. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Dreiser moved to New York City, where he became an editor and was involved in radical political causes. He finally completed his second novel, Jennie Gerhardt (1911), published by Harper & Brothers, but publishers remained reluctant to publish his novels as he had written them. Macmillan published his An American Tragedy (1925) and his verse drama Lilith (1926), co-authored with George Sterling.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle
McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto,
Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the
Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married
Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg
and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the
1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin
performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in
Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes
narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the
three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather
destroyed them.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Overton, Grant (1887-1930). American writer and editor. Born in New York, Overton worked for the New York Sun from 1906, serving as literary editor 1918-1919; Cather attributed the anonymous highly favorable review of My Ántonia in the Sun to Overton. He was an editor for the publisher George Doran, and from 1924 to 1927 he edited Collier’s Magazine, which serialized The Professor’s House in 1925. In addition to editing short story anthologies, Overton wrote biographical sketches of contemporary writers, including one of Cather in The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918). His 1928 substantially revised edition of this book reflects his conversations with Cather in 1925 about My Ántonia and The Professor’s House.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918) by Grant Martin Overton
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
