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 |
The present from you and Mr. Howlett3 has come, and I am sending back the volume the Library loaned me. I can't thank you enough for all the trouble you took to get the two books for me. If I come West next summer, I hope you will let me have tea with your staff4 again. I am starting for New York5 tomorrow. With good wishes and goodbye to you all
Yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0794.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0794
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Malcolm Wyer 1
- Date letter was written
- September 6 [1925]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's research on the history informing Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and her presence in Denver and Red Cloud in the summer of 1925.
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library (Vault MSS 788), Brigham Young University, L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, UT
Person Annotations
Wyer, Malcolm Glenn (1877-1965). Librarian. Malcolm Wyer was born in Kansas and grew up in Minnesota, graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1899. After graduating from the New York State Library School in Albany, NY, he became librarian at the University of Iowa (1904-1913), the University of Nebraska (1913-1924), and the Denver, CO, City Library (1924-1951). While in Denver he worked to strengthen the library’s collection of Western American history in cooperation with the University of Denver. Cather did research for Death Comes for the Archbishop at the Denver library in 1925, where she also met Louise Guerber Burroughs, who became a friend. Wyer married Charlotte Spalding in 1906; they had one daughter.
Howlett, William Joseph (1848-?). American Catholic priest and author. William Howlett taught in Rev. Joseph Machebeuf’s parochial school in Denver, CO, before being ordained as a Catholic priest in 1876. He served as chaplain of the Sisters of Loretto beginning in 1913. Howlett’s Life of the Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf, D.D. (1908) was Cather’s primary source for creating Father Joseph Vaillant in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Howlett’s other books include Historical Tribute to St. Thomas Seminary at Poplar Neck, near Bardstown, KY (1906) and Life of Rev. Charles Nerinckx (1915).
Burroughs, Ella Louise Guerber (1900-1985) (“Louise”). American librarian and curator. Ella Louise Guerber was born in Allentown, PA, and graduated from Cedar Crest College in 1919 and then the library school at Columbia University. At the time she met Cather in 1925, she was a reference librarian at the Denver Public Library and assisted Cather with her research on Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). In 1926, Guerber moved to New York City to take a position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she saw Cather frequently in person. She married Bryson Burroughs, Curator of Paintings, in 1928; he died in 1934. In 1950, when she received an honorary degree from Cedar Crest, she was Associate Curator of Paintings at the Met. After her retirement, she moved to Baltimore, MD, and then Princeton, NJ, where she died. Her friendship with Cather is documented by more than seventy letters from Cather to Burroughs from 1925 through Cather’s late life and by a diary documenting her in-person interactions with Cather from 1925 through 1927.
Place Annotations
