Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 could not answer your note3 and thank
you for the check before this, as I have been laid low by inocculation against typhoid. Next time
I'll take my chances with the disease itself. I don't expect to drink much water in
Italy4, anyhow. My Paris5 address will be care of Thomas Cook and
Sons. So far, everything seems to promise a good trip. I had a delightful hour with
Hugh Walpole6 before he sailed.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0506.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0506
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- May 8, 1920
- 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
On 24 April 1920 Greenslet forwarded Cather's copyright statement and a check for $358.95, observing that the continuing strong sales of O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia suggested they were performing like "classics."
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.
Walpole, Hugh (1884-1941). British writer. Born in New
Zealand, where his father was an Anglican priest, Hugh Walpole lived in New
York City from 1889 until 1893, when he was sent to boarding school in
England. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, from 1903 to
1906, then spent a few years teaching, reviewing, and writing. He published
his first, commercially unsuccessful novel in 1909, achieving commercial
success with his third novel in 1911. Henry James and Arnold Bennett took an
interest in him, and Walpole’s many works became very popular in the 1920s
and 1930s. He made four well-received and well-paid lecture tours in North
America; on the first, in 1919, Walpole praised Cather’s My Ántonia (1918) and Cather urged Houghton Mifflin to use
Walpole’s words in their advertising. Walpole was knighted in 1937; he died
at his home in the Lake District, the setting of many of his stories.
Place Annotations
