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 delayed replying to your letter4 because the Canbys5 gave me hope that I would see you before this. I am sorry that I cannot get the article ready for you by the date you mention, as I had previously promised an article6 to the "New Republic"7 and one8 to the "Nation,"9 to be done by February, and I am not very keen about writing articles. The lecture10 I gave in the West has never been put on paper, not a word of it, and it would have to be more carefully prepared for print than for an informal lecture, where one can so easily modify one's extravagant statements. I will try to do an article on that subject for you sometime, though, if you still wish it. Just now I am breaking in on a new story11 and am saving all my energy for that, the other articles being out of the way.
Sincerely yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0572.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0572
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Wilbur Cross1
- Date letter was written
- January 10, 1922
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Yale Review Records, 1911-1949 (YCAL MSS 145), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
On 19 December 1921, Cross wrote, following up on an exchange between Cather and Helen McAfee (see #0605), that Cather might write an essay on "Obstacles to American Art" based on lectures she had given in 1921. He suggested 5,000 words and a 1 February 1922 submission for spring publication.
Under the sponsorship of the Fine Arts Society, Cather lectured on 29 October 1921 at the Fontenelle Hotel in Omaha, NE.
Person Annotations
Cross, Wilbur (1862-1948). American scholar and state governor.
Wilbur Cross was born in Connecticut and educated at Yale, where he
earned a PhD in 1889. He became an English literature professor at Yale in
1894, specializing in the novel and editing the Yale
Review (for which he solicited articles from Cather). An
influential literary critic, Cross wrote an important review of Shadows on the Rock (1931), to which Cather replied
in one of her few letters commenting on her work to be made public. After
Cross’s retirement from Yale, he was elected governor of Connecticut,
serving four two-year terms from 1931 to 1939.
Canby, Henry Seidel (1878-1961). American critic and editor. Born to a prominent Wilmington, DE, family, Canby received a BA (1899) and PhD (1905) from Yale University. He began teaching English at Yale in 1900 and was editor of the Yale Review from 1911 to 1922. In 1920 he founded the Literary Review of the New York Post, which became an independent magazine, the Saturday Review of Literature, in 1924; he served as editor until 1936. He became editor in chief of the Book-of-the-Month Club on its founding in 1926. Canby married Marion Ponsonby Gause, also of Wilmington, in 1907, and they had two sons. Cather’s acquaintance with the Canbys seems to predate 1922, when her cordial correspondence with the Canbys began. In the Literary Review she published "The House on Charles Street" (1922) and in the Saturday Review a letter to Wilbur Cross on Shadows on the Rock (1931) and an essay on Thomas Mann (1936).
0292Canby, Marion Ponsonby Gause (1885-1974). American poet. Marion Ponsonby Gause was born in Wilmington, DE, and was educated at a private school. She married Henry Seidel Canby in 1907; they had two sons. She published two volumes of poetry, High Mowings (1932) and On My Way (1937). Cather probably met the Canbys in the early 1920s; her extant correspondence with them, together and individually, began in 1922.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"The Novel Démeublé," New Republic (April 12, 1922) by Willa Cather
New Republic
"Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle," Nation (1923) by Willa Cather
Nation
A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather
