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 must say a word about your splendid article3 on Vermont4 in the Nation5,- the only interesting one so far in that dull and deadly series6, the only one that sounds as if it were about human people. Why did Mr. White7 have to make his8 so awful?
Drop me a line to let me know on what day you can best spare the time to see Knopf9. It would be a great joy to me if you could spend a few hours here in the apartment10 with me before or after our call on him. I know how busy you'll be, so I don't ask for anything. I've already taken so much of your time and strength this spring. But if you could come here for a little while, it would be lovely.
Yours WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0598.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0598
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- [June 1, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Written shortly after #0597, this letter was composed on a Thursday after the publication of Canfield Fisher's article in the May 31, 1922, issue of the Nation and before Knopf's letter of June 7, 1922 (see #0599).
- 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.
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.
White, William Allen (1868-1944). American newspaper editor and
fiction writer. As the editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette, White had an audience and influence
far beyond the small town of Emporia, KS. He married Sallie Lindsay in 1893
and they bought the Gazette in 1895, with his wife
working with him on all aspects of producing the paper. His fiery
anti-Populist editorial “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, published during
the 1896 presidential campaign, made his national reputation, although his
politics later shifted from his early conservative Republicanism. Dubbed the
“Sage of Emporia” by H.L. Mencken for his widely reprinted editorials, he
won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for an editorial advocating free speech. He
began publishing short stories about small-town life in the 1890s, including
in McClure’s Magazine; Cather later remembered
reading his “Court of Boyville” stories with her brother Roscoe and
marveling that a man from Kansas had been able to publish them in McClure’s (#2242). White stopped writing fiction
after the failure of his novel In the Heart of a Fool
(1918), however. In the Nation Randolph Bourne
praised My Ántonia (1918) while denigrating the
“swollen bulk” and “stale brightness of conversation” in White’s fiction.
Cather approved Bourne’s comparison, dismissing White’s “jocular, familiar,
grapenutsy way” of presenting his subject matter that “really presents…his
own essentially vulgar personality” (#2085). Cather’s correspondence with
White commenced in 1919. She later asked him to review One
of Ours (1922), suggesting that although she had few “readers in
Nebraska or Kansas,” the novel was for her “home people,” who would be
persuaded by his opinion (#0603). He apparently did not review the novel,
but they met when he visited New York City in October 1922 and maintained a
cordial correspondence until his death.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Vermont: Our Rich Little Poor State," Nation (May 31, 1922) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Nation
"These United States," Nation ([1922-1924])
"Kansas: A Puritan Survival," Nation (April 19, 1922) by William Allen White
