Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
I am just trying to get into a new piece of
work4, and until I get it going I am living a hidden life. I'm not going to
accept any invitations until after the first of January. Then my period of
incarceration will be over, and I hope you'll let me din come to dinner. You won't misunderstand, will you?
Please ask Mr. Knopf5 to send me down the last part of the novel6, the part still in manuscript, as soon as he can, and I'll get it ready for the printer.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0758.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0758
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [December 8, 1924]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date of Monday, December 8, 1924, is based on several factors. Cather specifies declining invitations until January first, suggesting that she was declining a December invitation. Cather's reference to a novel to be sent soon to the printers best matches the publication schedule of The Professor's House, the galley proofs for which started being printed in early February 1925, establishing the year of this letter as 1924. Cather made what seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision to travel to Red Cloud in mid-December of 1924 (see #0760), which places this letter in early December.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Records (MS-00062), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
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.
Cather may be referring to new work that did not pan out or to a very early version of "Uncle Valentine" (1929).
Person Annotations
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.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
