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 |
Knopf3 will be in town2 from the 14th to the 17th of June and will be more than glad to see you.He at once suggested lunch, but I told him we had rather not. Lunching with any publisher always does me up for the day. He is a nice man, with a real enthusiasm for book-making,-but, for this story, he has exactly the limitations you mention.
Many people have helped me with Claude4, unknowingly, in one way and another, and now it's quite as if you were coming down a day earlier in his account! I can easily send you back5 the same set of proofs you had, if it will be any convenience. Of course it will all look fresher in the book, but say the word if you want the proofs.
Just now life seems to be made up of uninteresting chores. I am looking forward wistfully to seeing you. Jim6 dropped in for half an hour one noon not long ago. I was so pleased to see him again.
Lord, what a comfort it is to me to have you knowing and caring about Claude!
Yours WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0597.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0597
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- [May 29, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Written after #0595, on a Monday in May, and shortly before #0598, which is also concerned with scheduling a meeting with Knopf.
- 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
Canfield Fisher had agreed to write a review of One of Ours, and Cather anticipated she might want to consult the text of the book.
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.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Canfield, James A. (1874-1959) (“Jim”). American businessman; Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s brother. The only son of James H. Canfield and Flavia Camp Canfield, the younger James Canfield was born in Michigan, then moved with the family to Kansas, then Nebraska, where his father was chancellor of the University of Nebraska from 1891 to 1895; he was Cather’s classmate there. The family moved to Columbus, OH, where Cather visited them in 1898; he had just become engaged to Stella Elliott, another Nebraska alumna, whom he married in 1899 and with whom he had two sons. He owned a wholesale paper business in Westchester County, NY, until his retirement to Florida by 1940. Cather kept in occasional touch with James and Stella Canfield, largely through his younger sister, Dorothy.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
