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 |
Fred Harvey
Gallup New Mexico2 Edited[?] May 28 Dear Mr. Sedgwick1;
I never have felt much interest in the serialization of my books,—I've never cared a bit whether they were serialized or not. It's Mr. Reynolds3 who likes to serialize! And that matter is entirely up to him.
I am off on a long horseback and pack trip, and won't be doing any work before
August, much less bothering about business details. I mentioned your name
you to Mr. El Navajo
Fred Harvey
Gallup New
MexicoReynolds, as one of the few editors to whom I would allow him to show
an incomplete and uncorrected manuscript. But I don't interfere further than that
in
his transactions with magazines.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0833.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0833
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ellery Sedgwick 1
- Date letter was written
- May 28 [1926]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is confirmed by both the note written in another hand and Cather's travel in New Mexico in May 1926.
- Place letter was written
- Gallup, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Ellery Sedgwick Papers, 1898-1969 (Ms. N-854), Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA
Person Annotations
Sedgwick, Ellery (1872-1960). American magazine editor. Born
in New York City to parents from a distinguished New England family, Ellery
Sedgwick graduated from Harvard University in 1894. He was assistant editor
of the Youth’s Companion (1896-1899) and then editor
of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1900-1906—renamed
Leslie’s Monthly then American
Illustrated Magazine). He worked from 1906 to 1907 at McClure’s Magazine and briefly as a book editor at D.
Appleton and Company; in 1909 he began his long run as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which he had bought in 1908. Cather
evidently first met Sedgwick when they both worked at McClure’s, although she may also have encountered him at the home
of Annie Adams Fields in Boston. When Sedgwick wrote to Cather soliciting a
review of Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent
Friendships, Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James Fields
(1922, edited by MA DeWolfe Howe), she identified the Atlantic as “the only American magazine I read” (#3021). She also
published the poem “Poor Marty” (1931) and the essay “A Chance Meeting”
(1933) in the Atlantic. Sedgwick’s wife Mabel, whom
he married in 1904, died in 1937. He sold the Atlantic in 1939, the same year he married Marjorie Russell. He
died in Washington, DC.
Reynolds, Paul Revere (1864-1944). American literary agent.
Born in Boston, MA, Reynolds earned a BA from Harvard University in
1887 and an M.A in 1891, studying under William James. In the wake of the
International Copyright Act of 1891, he became the U.S. agent for the
English publisher Cassell, later undertaking similar work for other British
publishers, He then began representing individual authors seeking to place
fiction with magazines and book publishers, taking a ten per cent
commission. Reynolds placed fiction in McClure’s
Magazine when Cather was an editor there. Cather first allowed him
to act as her own agent in 1916, placing “The Diamond Mine” in McClure’s. She was very pleased with the price he
secured for the story, expressing “the greatest satisfaction in his conduct
of affairs” (#0361). For the next decade, she allowed him to place short
stories and serialize her novels in magazines, although not consistently.
After the serialization of Death Comes for the
Archbishop (1927) in the Forum, she
consistently put off his queries about what she was writing, and he was
evidently surprised by the publication of “Neighbor Rosicky” in the Woman’s Home Companion (1930). Cather assured him
that she still wanted to work with him, but either she herself or staff at
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., arranged magazine publication of her remaining
fiction.
Place Annotations
