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 |
Annex ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOR OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.2 Ref'd to 10-7 B—
Rec'd OCT 7 1926
NS _____ Wednesday My Dear Blanche1:
Why do these nuts4 keep trying to separate us from our Mortal Enemy5? Please write this lady6 telling her it can’t be done7. I have sent her a line to that effect also.
The copies of the books have arrived—I think Mr.
Adler8 has done himself and me proud. It’s a lovely book. I only hope
the public will be as eager to AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR
The Shattuck Inn
Annex
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOR OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY,
N.H. get away with it as these short story cranks seem to be.
You’ll have the rest of the Archbishop9 about October twenty-ninth, when I’ll return to Bank street10.
Please, kind friend, have somebody send me Virginia Wolfe11’s “The Voyage Out12”—I’m in an awful plight for something to read and don’t know what to order, but I want to try that.
Hastily W. S. C. AMERICAN PLANOPEN ALL THE YEAR
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0847.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0847
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [October 6, 1926]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The date of this letter is established by Blanche Knopf's response of October 7, 1926.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 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
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).
See #0844 for a similar exchange with the publisher Dodd, Mead about My Mortal Enemy.
Blanche Knopf wrote to Cather on 7 October 1926 saying Alfred Knopf had already responded to Blanche Colton Williams and commenting, "They certainly are trying to tear you apart from the book -- it is too funny."
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.
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.
Williams, Blanche Colton (1879-1944). American writer and editor.
Born near Kosciusko, MS, Blanch Colton Williams graduated from the
Mississippi Industrial Institute and College (now Mississippi University for
Women) in 1898 and subsequently taught English at Stanton College in
Natchez, MS, and at Grenada College in Grenada, MS. Upon moving to New York
City, she received both her MA and PhD from Columbia University in 1908 and
1910 respectively. She taught English at Hunter College in New York City
from 1910 until her retirement in 1939 and also taught a course in short
story writing at Columbia from 1914 to 1926. She wrote several textbooks and
biographies and served as the chair of the O. Henry Memorial Prize
Committee, editing its annual O. Henry Memorial Prize
Stories.
Adler, Elmer (1884-1962). American printer, publisher,
editor, and author. After moving from Rochester, NY, to New York
City, Adler founded the Pynson Printers in 1922. He also became a partner in
Random House in 1922 and founded the Colophon: A Book
Collector’s Quarterly in 1930. Adler’s Pynson press produced deluxe
limited editions of April Twilights and Other Poems
(1923) and December Night (1933) (an excerpt from Death Comes for the Archbishop). He also designed the
edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop illustrated
by Harold von Schmidt (1927), the title page for My Mortal
Enemy (1926) and the title page and dust jacket for Shadows on the Rock (1931). Adler approached Cather
in 1929 about contributing to a planned series in the Colophon on “Getting into Print”; her essay “My First Novels
(there were two)” finally appeared in 1931. In 1940, Adler established the
Department of Graphic Arts at Princeton University, where he remained until
1952. He then moved to Puerto Rico to establish La Casa del Libro, with
which he was associated until his death.
Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941). British author and journalist.
Born to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep, Adeline Virginia
Stephen was educated mostly at home and attended the Ladies’ Department of
King’s College London from 1897 to 1901. After 1904 she became involved in
the Bloomsbury Group circle of intellectuals and artists, which included
Clive Bell, E. M. Forster, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard
Keynes, and Leonard Woolf, whom she would marry. Virginia Woolf’s first
novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and with her
husband she founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. Woolf developed her
experimental stream-of-consciousness narrative technique in her best-known
novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To
the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928).
Woolf committed suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression. Cather
admired Woolf’s writing enough to wish that Knopf would publish her work in
the U.S. (#2577).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Mortal Enemy (1926), by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
The Voyage Out (1915), by Virginia Woolf
