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 |
How nice you are to be glad of my fur coat. A young man came by on Monday from the office, policy3 came yesterday but I've not had time to open it yet.
Read "Thais"4 my dear, the opera5 was made from Anatole France's6 lovely book. And one called, I suppose "On the White Stone"7—I don't know their titles in English.
I'm so delighted you got the nicer spoons—what a bargain!
Hastily Willie Mrs. C. W. Weisz1 818 Lafayette Parkway Chicago8 Ill. NEW YORK, N.Y. STA. C2 JAN 22 1926 11-AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0822.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0822
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- [January 21, 1926]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
In #1819, Cather asked Weisz to get her husband to arrange for an appraisal for insurance purposes.
Person Annotations
Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong
friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L.
Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud,
graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play
town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local
teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of
Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the
A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in
Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the
American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934.
Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes
stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina
Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.
France, Anatole (1844-1924) ("Jacques Anatole Thibault"). French novelist. Born in Paris, France, Jacques Thibault, writing under the pseudonym Anatole France, was a prolific author in many genres but especially the novel. His first great success as a novelist was Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), which earned a prize from the Académie Française. He became a member a member of the Académie in 1896, an event that Cather applauded as a young newspaper critic. She also praised his Thaïs (1890) as a “masterpiece of historic fiction.” In later years, France became a newspaper critic, promoting the virtues of the French classicism of the eighteenth century embodied in his works and criticizing French naturalism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Thaïs (1890) by Anatole France
Thaïs (1894) by Jules Massenet
The White Stone (1905) by Anatole France
