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 have had several answers to my inquiries about Mr. Llona3, all reassuring, like the enclosed4. I would like to have him make the translation, and I would be very willing to wait for my share of the fee you ask him for the right to publish the book5 in French. I believe I am entitled to half of this fee. Would you, therefore, be willing to write him that you will let him undertake the translation and publication for fifty dollars on signing of the contract, and the rest after he has sold a few thousand copies? It is very hard to make a French publisher risk anything just now.
The man's notes on the first chapter were so good that I would like to have him make the translation. While such a translation would not mean anything to my American publishers, it would please me very much, and would put you to no trouble except that of relaxing your terms a trifle. This, I should think, you would be willing to do, if I am willing to forego my share of the fee.
Will you ask Mr. Linscott6 to send me the original photograph from which this cut was made7? I have lost the only other one I had, and I have meant to ask you for this for a long time. Please also send me one of the cuts made from it, as I want to send it to Mr. Llona to use in France8. He selected it as the most peau rouge9 in my collection. I think he will present the book well. He has worked out some interesting renderings of idiomatic expressions.
Faithfully W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0520.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0520
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- December 14 [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
In Greenslet's response of 15 December 1920, he quotes Fanny Butcher (Victor Llona is "a young man of intelligence and some fortune"), apparently from the letter Cather enclosed. Based on Llona's personal wealth, Greenslet suggested 500 francs or thirty dollars as an initial payment to Llona.
See #0521
Translation: red skin (French) (i.e. Native American).
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.
Llona, Victor Manuel (1886-1953). Peruvian-French writer and translator. Born in Lima, Peru, Victor Llona was raised and educated in Paris, France, where he entered the cosmopolitan café scene as a teenager. In 1906 he moved with his parents to Chicago, IL, returned to Paris in 1913 but left for New York City at the outbreak of World War I. On his return to France he became friends with both French and American expatriate writers and launched a career translating dozens of American novels into French. His translation of Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), Mon Antonia (1924), was one of his earliest translations. Before his return to France he married Florence Nelson of Chicago. They had two children, Doris and Eric, and his wife collaborated with him on some of his translations. The couple later divorced.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
