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 hate to bother you so often about this, but I have had a letter from Mr. Davidson4, and the delicate gentleman does not
say anything about terms,; neither does he tell me which six weeks of the summer his school5 is in operation. The date would
be an important consideration for me. Of course one wouldn't expect lecture prices
for talks to a small number of specially interested students, but I think I before writing him I would like to know whether the
school would pay my traveling expenses and cover the week or so I would be there.
IA slow-selling author, who pays
little attention to in-come, has to be pay attention
to out-go, or be in the hole at the end of the year. Now, I am NOT, with tightly
compressed lips, thrwoowing your magnificent sales in your face! I'm not a bit
sore about being a slow proposition on the market,; but I have to
cut my plans according to my cloth in order to avoid worrying. Hence, I ask you for
light about terms before replying to the Dan
Dean.
And now, a counter proposition, in which I really am asking something for nothing:
When the page proofs of my new novel6 are ready,
sometime in May or June, would you be willing to read them over, not carefully and
under any strain, but merely as a general reader, and report ot me if you notice anything that seems to you misleading as to facts, or
false as to taste. The last third of the story, unfortunately, takes place in France7, under conditions of which my knowledge is not great,.
but I have tried not to pretend to
know more than I do. If it got by you, that would mean a good deal. The one
character that matters is all right there, I am sure; I would certainly know it if
he wasn't. But some of the things that touch him may be wrong, and at a word from
you I could drop an indiscreet phrase or incident.
Tell me quite honestly and unhesitstingly if it would be inconvenient or distasteful
embarrassing to you in any way.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0578.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0578
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- February 6 [1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the publication of One of Ours in 1922.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
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.
The Bread Loaf summer school of English was started in 1920 on the model of Middlebury College’s already active summer schools in foreign languages. It offered master’s-level graduate courses in English and American literature, pedagogy, public speaking and debate, modern drama, and composition. As a faculty member and writer-in-residence in 1922, Cather agreed to give five lectures: three on writing, one on the writer’s relationship to the magazine editor, and the final a question-and-answer session with students.
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Davison, Wilfred Edward (1887-1929). American academic. Born
in South Walden, VT, Wilfred Davison graduated from Middlebury College in
1913 and pursued graduate work at Harvard and Columbia. He taught in the
German department at Middlebury before transferring to the American
Literature department in 1921. As the first dean of the Bread Loaf School of
English, a summer program of Middlebury, Davison recruited nationally-known
faculty and invited visiting writers, including Willa Cather, Robert Frost,
and Dorothy Canfield Fisher to interact with the school’s students.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
