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 |
Here I am in wild woods and wild weather. I've been working awfully hard on a quite new novel3, and have got nearly half way through the first writing of it. It's not very sweet or "appealing"—any diabetic patient could take it with safety! But it is, to me, fascinating in form—not intensely satisfying, but I can't get away from it, and so I'll have to see it through.
I've often thought with delight of the romantic costume with which you honored me that day you came to see me on Bank Street4. It is really lovely for you.
Whale Cove Cottage September 7 Dear ZoëI started to write you a birch bark letter, kid-fashion, but my pen is too stiff for
it. We've had every kind of weather but heat; sun and
and wind and splendid streaming fogs, and
the tempest5 that beat the "Arabic" up
so nearly carried our whole island out to sea. I've enjoyed every day of it and have
been working hard and with great zest. Also walking lots, and cruising round among
lighthouse and bell-buoys. Miss Lewis6 and I
have a lovely little cottage all to ourselves—the house at which we eat not far
away. I have literally
literally lived in the tan-colored hunters suit you gave me
two years ago, as it sheds the water from grass and brush better than anything else
I have. For really bad weather I wear knickerbockers. There are no roads—or
very few—mostly trails through the woods and along the cliffs.
Love and greetings to you, dear Zoë, and I'll have a few interesting things to show you when I get back about October 15.
Devotedly W.S.C. Miss Zoë Akins1 20 Fifth Avenue New York City7 U.S.A. NORTH HEAD N.B.2 SP 8 24 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0743.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0743
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only. The first leaf is a piece of birch bark. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- September 7 [1924]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to a late August 1924 Atlantic hurricane.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- 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.
The fourth hurricane of the 1924 Atlantic hurricane season battered the White Star passenger liner the Arabic off the Nantucket Shoals on 26 August. It came into port in New York City 27 August with 75 injured passengers.
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’.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925), by Willa Cather
