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 |
Many letters, when people are ill, can be a great bother, as I well know. But I will not be in New York3 before November, and I would like very much to know how Mrs. Canby4 is. In a few days I leave here2 and go down to the Shattuck Inn5, Jaffrey, N.H.6 I'd be ever so grateful if in a week or ten days from now you would send me a line there, telling me how she gets on. Please give her my love, and tell her that I simply beg her to get well. I want to see her and you, and I want good fortune and happiness for you both.
Sincerely Yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0744.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0744
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Henry Seidel Canby 1
- Date letter was written
- September 11 [1924]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured year is based on Cather's travel schedule in 1924 when she was on Grand Manan Island through mid-September and then went to Jaffrey, NH, after a few days in Boston, MA (see #0748).
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Henry Seidel Canby Papers (YCAL MSS 64), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Person Annotations
Canby, Henry Seidel (1878-1961). American critic and editor. Born to a prominent Wilmington, DE, family, Canby received a BA (1899) and PhD (1905) from Yale University. He began teaching English at Yale in 1900 and was editor of the Yale Review from 1911 to 1922. In 1920 he founded the Literary Review of the New York Post, which became an independent magazine, the Saturday Review of Literature, in 1924; he served as editor until 1936. He became editor in chief of the Book-of-the-Month Club on its founding in 1926. Canby married Marion Ponsonby Gause, also of Wilmington, in 1907, and they had two sons. Cather’s acquaintance with the Canbys seems to predate 1922, when her cordial correspondence with the Canbys began. In the Literary Review she published "The House on Charles Street" (1922) and in the Saturday Review a letter to Wilbur Cross on Shadows on the Rock (1931) and an essay on Thomas Mann (1936).
Canby, Marion Ponsonby Gause (1885-1974). American poet. Marion Ponsonby Gause was born in Wilmington, DE, and was educated at a private school. She married Henry Seidel Canby in 1907; they had two sons. She published two volumes of poetry, High Mowings (1932) and On My Way (1937). Cather probably met the Canbys in the early 1920s; her extant correspondence with them, together and individually, began in 1922.
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.
