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 |
One last word4: The Knopfs5 will take the story6 up with the Metropolitan7 if they want it. But I don't want to do anything through Charley Towne8. I dislike him and his kind too much. I've always preferred being poor to having anything to do with cheap people of that sort—simply because they disgust me with life to a degree that cripples my working power. If he telephones the Knopfs he must say that I did not show it him; Mrs. Knopf has undertaken to try to serialize it9 for me—wholly out of good nature—and I must not seem to be paying another game on the side, you see.
I know how generously you are doing this for my interests, but Towne never has any real authority anywhere. Get it away from him, for he'll show it about to his sort—just to seem to have a finger in everything. As soon as you get the story, send it over any afternoon after two oclock, as Josephine10 is not here before.
Don't be impatient with me—laugh at my narrow-mindedness, but people like Towne make
me physically ill and I can't owe them anything. I only wish I could keep my name
off their[?] out
of their mouths, and my books out of their hands, even in print. The taxi is at the
door and I'm off, with my warmest love to you and permission to laugh at my funny
prejudices!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0652.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0652
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- [November 22, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date of this letter is based on the presumption that it was written the day after #0647 as a continuation of it.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins Papers, 1878-1959 (mssAU 1-5456), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
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.
This letter is apparently a follow up to #0647, in which Cather responded to Akins's play The Texas Nightingale.
On Cather commissioning Blanche Knopf to serialize A Lost Lady at exactly this moment, see #2542.
Person Annotations
Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.
Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted
verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected,
advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her
hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a
playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to
her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an
adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In
1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and
director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong
correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both
commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.
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.
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.
Towne, Charles Hanson (1877-1949) (“Charley”). American editor, writer, and literary agent. Born in Kentucky, Charles Towne moved to New York where he worked first at Cosmopolitan, then at Smart Set from 1901-1907, then joined the staff of the Delineator as fiction editor from 1907-1910. He was an editor at McClure’s Magazine from 1914-1920, and of Harper’s Bazaar from 1926-1929. Towne published volumes of verse, fiction, juvenile fiction, travel writing, and etiquette advice for men. He also worked as a literary agent, notably for Somerset Maugham and Theodore Dreiser. Cather published “The Diamond Mine” (1916) in McClure’s while Towne was there; later, Cather was annoyed at Zoë Akins for referring Towne to her, denouncing him as “cheap” (#0652).
Bourda, Joséphine Marie Bernardine Brun (1892-1959). Cather’s maid. Raised in Lourdes in the Pyrénées region of France, Joséphine’s father Jean-Marie Brun ran a restaurant. In 1909 she married Alphonse Bourda, and they had two children, Marie, born 1910, and Clémentine, born 1912. In 1913 Joséphine, Alphonse, and Joséphine’s father immigrated to the U.S., leaving Marie and Clémentine behind with relatives. Alphonse and Joséphine’s third child, Jeanette, was born in New York City in late 1913. Soon after, Joséphine found work cooking and keeping house for Willa Cather and Edith Lewis in their Five Bank Street apartment. In 1919 the Bourda family was reunited in New York and Joséphine stopped working, but by late 1921, she was back working half days until sometime after 1925. She resumed working for Cather and Lewis in 1932 when they moved to a new apartment at 570 Park Avenue, but in 1935, she and her husband decided to return to France because of his failing health. Cather considered Joséphine a personal friend and praised her as “an artist in her way” (#0563). Cather and Bourda evidently corresponded after her return to France but their letters have not surfaced. She died in the village of Saint Pé de Bigorre.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather
Metropolitan
