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 |
Twelfth
1922 My dear Mr. Seibel1:
Thank you for your very, very kind letter. The book4 of course has made the hottest kind of friends and the hottest kind of enemies. On one morning I got two letters from two Lutheran ministers - one challenging me to a debate in Carnegie Hall, and the other telling me that I had written “a masterpiece that will shed glory on our literature for many, many years to come.”
Mr. Knopf5 is delighted with the controversy6 and the very good business results7 of it. I can’t say I enjoy it so much. I think it is rather unfortunate for an imaginative work to be argued about in this way - it destroys the perspective.
But I am glad you think it a good book. I think it is. It took a great deal out of
me.
and I worked at it so long and so
hard that I think my interest would have flagged if there hadn’t been a live fire
at
the core of the book.
story.
I see your proofreader eye is still with you and I am immensely obliged to you for the errors you noted. I’ll see that they are caught up in the next printing8 - which, I believe, is to be made very soon.
I have had one or two irate letters from Germans, but I think they were simply people who were not very intelligent. Nobody could read the book without seeing how sympathetically the individual German is always handled - almost sentimentally.
If ever I do come to Pittsburgh9, you may be sure I’ll let you know. I go West in a few weeks but I will be here again soon after the first of January. Please be sure to let me know if you and Mrs. Seibel10 are in town.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0627.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0627
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- October 12, 1922
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
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.
In #0620 Cather describes the reception of One of Ours: "The Pacifists have come at me like a swarm of hornets. It's disconcerting to have Claude regarded as a sentimental glorification of War, when he's so clearly a farmer boy, neither very old nor very wise."
Knopf sold nearly sixteen thousand copies of One of Ours within the first month of publication.
The fourth trade printing of One of Ours, the next after this 12 October 1922 letter, appeared in November 1922. It made seven corrections of errors in spelling or punctuation, presumably the ones George Seibel had pointed out.
Person Annotations
Seibel, George (1873-1958). American literary and drama critic.
Cather met Seibel and his wife Helen while working as editor of the
Home Monthly in Pittsburgh in 1896 and 1897. They
regularly studied French and German together, Cather read her work in
progress to him, and George reviewed April Twilights
(1903) in the Pittsburgh Gazette.
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.
Seibel, Helen Hiller (1873-1971). Cather’s Pittsburgh friend.
Born in Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents, Helen Hiller
married George Seibel on 6 September 1894. Their one child, Erna, was born
in 1897. Cather met the couple through George Seibel’s work for the Home Monthly, which Cather was editing. Soon the
three were meeting frequently at the Seibel home, studying and translating
French and German literature. Cather read her own poetry and short stories
to them as well. The Seibel house at 114 S. 17th Street on Pittsburgh’s
South Side served as the model for the home of Alfred Engelhardt and his
uncle in “Double Birthday” (1925).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
