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 |
Several months ago3 I sent Mr. Linscott4 a photograph. He wrote that he would have some cuts made and then return it. Will you ask him to send it back to me now?
If your business office could send me a check along with the semi–annual statement, it would be a convenience at this particular time.
I hear good reports from persons who recently crossed on the Royal George. But I
learn that thirty Nebraska5 and Kansas6 club women are crossing on the same boat,
goinfg to a congress7 in Switzerland8. That is
about the worst thing that could happen to me!
Please send an advertisinfg copy of "Antonia"9, with new jacket, the to Dr. Johan
Bojer10, care of Moffat Yard and Co. 31 Union Square. I
want him to take it back to Norway11 with
him. Norwegians tell me it is the kind of book he would do a good deal for. It
would be nice if you would write him a letter, calling his attention to it as a
truthful presentation of pioneer life and a book of some literary merit.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0504.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0504
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typeritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- April 19 [1920]
- 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 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
See #0594
The Eighth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance took place 6–12 June 1920 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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.
Linscott, Robert N. (1886-1964). American editor. Linscott began as an office boy at Houghton Mifflin in 1904 at age seventeen. He became the company’s advertising manager, handling publicity for some of Cather’s books, and later moved to the editorial side, handling works by Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and others. He moved to Random House in 1944, where he edited several anthologies, including a best-selling edition of Emily Dickinson’s letters and poetry.
Bojer, Johan (1872-1959). Norwegian novelist and dramatist.
Born Johan Kristoffer Hansen to unmarried parents and raised near
Trondheim, Norway, as a foster child in a poor family, Johan took the
surname Bojer after the death of his father in 1894. He published his first
novel in 1893 and became well known for depicting the lives of poor
fishermen and farmers in the Lofoten Islands. In 1923 he traveled to
Litchville, North Dakota, to research the Norwegian immigrant community
there for his novel Vor Egen Stamme (1924), published
in English as The Emigrants (1925). Cather met Bojer
in New York City during an earlier visit to the U.S. in 1920.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
