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 |
Yes, I'd much rather do this3 than make my fortune at the various lucrative commissions that are constantly pressed upon me.
In the first place I must ask you send me down a complete set of the books, the
original edition. The safest way is to for me to cut
them up myself and bind them up into volumes in the sequence that seems best.
The first volume, of course, would take in all the Pointed Fir4 sketches, including "The Queen's Twin"5, "A Dunnet Shepherdess"6, and "William's Wedding"7. The second volume8, if one took only the very best, would be an equally fat one. "Deephaven"9 is charming, but I don't think it belongs with Miss Jewett's10 best mature work.
The librarian at the branch library round the corner tells m me that the young intellectuals of Greenwich Village2 sometimes ask vaguely for "some of Sarah Jewett's
books", but when she produces volumes like "The
White Heron"11 they finger them, say they look like children's books, and
leave them on the desk. E She thinks their physical
appearance is so much against them
with this generation. I rather love those dumpy little books myself, but if you are
going to make an appeal to the reading public of today I think the stories ought to
have a fresh envelope and be put issued in standard-size volumes with good clear
type12,-(I would suggest type like
that you used in "Antonia"13)--some type that does not look like
text-book type. I don't mean that I think the books ought to look loud, naturally,
but modern.
If you send me down the books at once I will get to work in any spare moments I have. You can be setting the new volumes while I do the introduction. And, by the way, I do wish you would come to see me sometime when you are in town.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherMrs. Knopf14 has just sold
the movie movie rights of "A Lost Lady"15 for me for twelve thousand.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0718.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0718
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- February 17 [1924]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 14 February 1924, Greenslet reported that Mary Rice Jewett, sister and literary exectuor of Sarah Orne Jewett, had visited the Houghton Mifflin offices to discuss "the present sales of her sister's books." She approved of "the project" Greenslet and Cather had "entertained together two or three years ago, of a selection of her best stories by [Cather], with a critical and appreciative preface."
On 21 February 1924, Greenslet suggested that a "two-volume selection" would be unlikely to produce "an extension and perpetuation of Miss Jewett's public." The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) was, however, two volumes.
When The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) appeared, Houghton Mifflin did increase the size of the volumes. However, they did so by increasing the margins on pages printed from existing stereotype plates rather than setting the type anew as Cather suggested.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). American short story writer and
novelist. Born in South Berwick, ME, Jewett began sharing homes
in Boston (at 148 Charles Street) and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA, with Annie
Adams Fields in 1881, while continuing to live in her family home in South
Berwick with her mother and sister part of the year. She was associated
throughout her career with the Atlantic Monthly, and
her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs,
was serialized there in 1896. Like much of her fiction, it focused on rural
and small town New England life. By the time Cather met Jewett at 148
Charles Street in 1908, Jewett had largely ceased writing because of a
spinal concussion she suffered in a 1902 carriage accident. She wrote
important letters of advice to Cather in 1908, criticizing her decision to
write "The Gull's Road" (1908) from the perspective of a male character,
which she called "something of a masquerade" (27 Nov. 1908), and urging her
to give up her editorial work at McClure's Magazine
so she could focus full-time on fiction writing (13 Dec. 1908). After
Jewett's death in South Berwick in 1909, Cather often referred to her and
her advice about writing. Cather edited The Best Stories
of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) for publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in
her preface classed The Country of the Pointed Firs
with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as one of "three
American books which have the possibility of a long, long life."
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) by Sarah Orne Jewett
"The Queen's Twin," The Queen's Twin (1899) by Sarah Orne Jewett
"A Dunnet Shepherdess," The Queen's Twin (1899) by Sarah Orne Jewett
"William's Wedding," Atlantic Monthly (July 1910) by Sarah Orne Jewett
Deephaven (1877) by Sarah Orne Jewett
"A White Heron," A White Heron and Other Stories (1886) by Sarah Orne Jewett
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather
