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 |
It would give me great pleasure if I could pay you a visit3 at Breadloaf4 this summer, but I shall not be able to do so. I am going West the first of April and shall not be back until autumn.
I had great pleasure in meeting Mr. and Mrs. Whicher5 in Paris6 last November. I hear they are having a delightful winter there. Dorothy Canfield7, too, was my near neighbor during the autumn and we had some fine excursions together. I had a letter from her yesterday and every thing goes well with her.
With most cordial greetings to yourself and Dr. Collins8, I am
Sincerely yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0721.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0721
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Wilfred Edward Davison 1
- Date letter was written
- February 28, 1924
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , Middlebury College, Davis Family Library, Middlebury, VT
Individual Annotations
Davison was likely asking her to lecture again at the Bread Loaf School of English, as she had in July 1922.
Person Annotations
Davison, Wilfred Edward (1887-1929). American academic. Born
in South Walden, VT, Wilfred Davison graduated from Middlebury College in
1913 and pursued graduate work at Harvard and Columbia. He taught in the
German department at Middlebury before transferring to the American
Literature department in 1921. As the first dean of the Bread Loaf School of
English, a summer program of Middlebury, Davison recruited nationally-known
faculty and invited visiting writers, including Willa Cather, Robert Frost,
and Dorothy Canfield Fisher to interact with the school’s students.
Whicher, George Frisbie (1889-1954). Amherst College English
professor. After receiving a PhD from Columbia University in
1913, Whicher taught at Amherst College, his alma mater, from 1915 to 1954.
The most notable of his many books and translations was a critical biography
of Emily Dickinson, This Was a Poet (1938). Whicher
sometimes taught at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of
Middlebury College in Vermont. He and his wife, Harriet Fox Whicher, met
Cather there in 1922 when she came to give four lectures about writing.
Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox Whicher and Stephen
Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and George until late in
life.
Whicher, Harriet Fox (1890-1966). Mount Holyoke College English
Professor. Harriet Fox earned a BA from Barnard College at
Columbia University in New York City in 1910 and an MA from Columbia in
1911. She was an instructor in the Barnard College and Smith College English
Departments before she began a long career teaching English at Mount Holyoke
College in South Hadley, MA, from 1918 to 1944. Her long friendship with
Cather began in 1922 when she and her husband, George Frisbie Whicher, met
Cather at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of Middlebury
College in Vermont. Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox
Whicher and Stephen Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and
George until late in life. After Harriet Whicher’s retirement from teaching
she worked as a freelance copy editor at McGraw Hill and edited a collection
of her deceased husband’s essays and speeches.
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Collins, Edward Day (1869-1940). American educator. Edward Day Collins, born in Hardwick, VT, was adopted and raised by Ira Day Richardson Collins and Mary E. Tenney. In 1899 Collins earned a PhD in History from Yale University. After teaching there for three years he moved to back to Vermont, where he served as the principal of the Johnson Normal School and a Professor of Pedagogy at Middlebury College. Collins retired from teaching in 1923 and founded the École Champlain, a French language summer camp for girls, in Ferrisburgh, VT.
Place Annotations
