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 |
Bread Loaf, Vt. RECEIVED BY _____
REFERRED TO _____
JUL 31 1922
ANSWERED BY _____
FILED BY _____ July 28 Dear Mrs. Knopf1:
Why4 did you send me a check so promptly? You may not have a call for the book5! Thank you.
Please tell Mr. Knopf6 to send the proofs of
the book of verse7 to me at the address given below. I
hope they will be along early in August. I had some snap-shots8 taken as Mr.
Spier9 requested and have sent them to N.
Y.10 to be developed. As soon as they are returned I will send him a
print. I leave this Bread Loaf Inn,
Bread Loaf, Vt. really lovely place2 next Wednesday and go on to Grand Manan11 via Montreal12. The G. M. is a lovely island off the coast of New Brunswick13, where I shall have a cottage all my
own to work in.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0610.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0610
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- July 28 [1922]
- Place letter was written
- Bread Loaf, Vermont, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Records (MS-00062), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
Individual Annotations
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.
Alfred Knopf reported in his 4 August 1922 letter that he had "orders in hand for almost 10,000 copies" of One of Ours and expected to have copies ready to send out by 15 August.
Likely for publicity purposes related to the publication of One of Ours (see #2532 and #2533).
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
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.
Spier, Franklin (1896-1973). American publishing and advertising executive. Born and raised in New York City, Franklin Spier received a BA from Columbia University in 1917. In the 1920s, he worked at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., coordinating book reviewing and other promotion activities. In the 1930s he founded Franklin Spier, Inc. an advertising agency specializing in book promotion.
Jacobus, Sarah Hayes (1875-1948). Proprietor of the Whale Cove Inn, Grand Manan Island. An 1897 graduate of the Boston Normal School for Gymnastics, Sarah Jacobus "discovered" Grand Manan Island with two classmates in 1900, and in 1901 they purchased property at Whale Cove. By the time Willa Cather and Edith Lewis first visited Whale Cove in 1922, the summer colony had become an inn, with guests renting rooms in the main building or in adjacent cottages and taking meals in the inn's dining room. Jacobus was co-owner of the inn, and during the summer season she was in residence as the on-site manager. When summer visitors, including Cather and Lewis, built their own cottages, they continued to take meals in the dining room. In the off seasons from 1920 through 1932 Jacobus lived in Manhattan and worked in the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library. Later in her life, she lived year round on Grand Manan and died there.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
April Twilights and Other Poems (1923) by Willa Cather
