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#0555: Willa Cather to Will Owen Jones, October 1 [1921]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Red Cloud2, October 1st Dear Mr. Jones1;

I shall go back to Lincoln3 for a day after I speak4 in Omaha5, but my engagements in Chicago6 are such that I do not believe I can spend more than one day in Lincoln, and I shall have time only to see a few old friends. I am very tired, as I have been working hard since I've been home, and visiting in a little town where one grew up is not altogether restful, though it is so pleasant. The townspeople h here have always been cordial and homelike, and they never, as you once so savagely suggested, met me with a rope. They don't make a great fuss, either, but they always make me feel that they are glad when things go well with me.

Very sincerely yours Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:
cat.let0555.xml
Letter identifier
0555
Contents
Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written
Will Owen Jones 1
Date letter was written
October 1 [1921]
Explanation of conjectured date
Cather's reference to her lecture in Omaha suggests that she wrote this letter in 1921.
Place letter was written
Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
Location of original letter
Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA

Individual Annotations

Cather was invited to speak before the Omaha Society of Fine Arts on 29 October 1921.

Person Annotations

0069

Jones, Will Owen (1862-1928). Newspaper editor. Will Owen Jones was born in Wisconsin and came to Nebraska by 1880. He worked for the Nebraska State Journal while attending the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, graduating in 1886. That year he became city editor of the paper, then associate editor in 1889 (the year he married pianist Edith M. Doolittle), and then managing editor in 1892. He was close to Charles and Mariel Gere, the owners of the Nebraska State Journal, and the Jones’s only child, Mariel Jones, was named for Mrs. Gere. Cather took his journalism course at the university in 1893 and wrote to him often early in her career, although he could be severe in his criticism of some of her work.

Place Annotations

Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States
Lincoln, Nebraska, United States
Omaha, Nebraska, United States
Chicago, Illinois, United States

© 2004-2024, Willa Cather Archive. Emily J. Rau, editor. Updated 2023. The Willa Cather Archive is freely distributed by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. UNL Logo