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 have to thank you for one of the most interesting contributions3 to the controversy about "One of Ours"4,- certainly one of the best-reasoned5 and thought out. Aside from war prejudices, the trouble with the critics seems to be that they liked "Antonia"6 and wanted me to do the same act. But their state of mind does not bother me. "Antonia" had been out for two years before one of these gentlemen were in the least interested. They didn't like it at first because it had no structure etc. etc. This book may go through the same history. It is selling quite remarkably and has bucked up the sale of all my other books. You see, what the reviewers say really does not matter much. It's nice when they're pleased, but if one took either their approval or their disapproal very seriously, one would have an unquiet life. If one tries the least little new experiment in technic or treatment, one perplexes and annoys them. Somebody pointed out to Broun7 that the 'discriptions' in Antonia were good; here comes along a book without any 'descriptions', so how can it be good8?
I have been delayed by the proofs of "April Twilights"9 so that I will not get my Thanksgiving at home10; I take the Limited for Chicago11 tomorrow, and will eat turkey on the train on Thursday.
Let me thank you for your amusing massing of evidence; I hadn't got it all together in my mind like that at all. Practically all the same charges were brought against "Antonia"; particularly dullness. All the New York critics except two, I think, said it was deadly, deadly dull and showed a great falling off from its predecessor.
With best wishes for a happy Christmastide Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0650.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0650
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Lorna Birtwell1
- Date letter was written
- November 27 [1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the publication of Lorna Birtwell's letter in the November 25, 1922, issue of the New York Evening Post Literary Review.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Rare Book and Manuscript Library General Manuscripts Collection, 1789-2013 (MS#0001), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
In her published letter, Birtwell argued that critics had attempted to "superimpose" their own ideas onto Cather's novel, focusing on what they thought Cather should have written rather than on the novel she had written.
In his review, Broun found the entire book dull ("Our personal tragedy is not only that we do not like One of Ours as well as My Antonia but that we do not like it at all"). He also criticized Cather for making her protagonist find redemption in the war, pointing to Three Soldiers (1921) by John Dos Passos as more authentically representing the mood of soldiers at the front.
Person Annotations
Birtwell, Lorna (1888-after 1948). American writer and teacher.
Born in Massachusetts, Lorna R. F. Birtwell attended Radcliffe
College, where she wrote for the student magazine, graduating in 1911. Willa
Cather relished two of Birtwell’s letters to Heywood Broun of the New York Tribune, published in the paper in 1919,
which championed Cather’s works. As an aspiring writer, Birtwell attended
several summer sessions of the Bread Loaf School of English. At the 1922
session she met Cather, who invited her to attend her Friday teas at 5 Bank
Street. By 1930 Birtwell taught short story writing in the Columbia
University Extension Division, co-editing a volume of student work. She
published an essay, “Remembering Willa Cather,” about the Bread Loaf time,
in Women’s Press (1948).
Broun, Heywood (1888-1939). American newspaper columnist and writer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Heywood Broun attended Harvard University and worked for a succession of New York newspapers. At the World Telegram, he began his syndicated column “It seems to me,” in which he championed progressive political causes. He was active in the Newspaper Guild and was one of the original members of the selection committee for the Book of the Month Club. Broun reviewed Cather’s One of Ours (1922) negatively but lauded A Lost Lady (1923).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Letter to the Editor," New York Evening Post Literary Review (November 25, 1922), by Lorna Birtwell
One of Ours (1922), by Willa Cather
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
April Twilights and Other Poems (1923), by Willa Cather
