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 sorry I missed the opportunity to contribute to your sheaf of letters. When your request4 came to Bank street, I was up in the country, writing, and no business mail was being forwarded to me. As 'business mail' means anything with a magazine or newspaper return card on the envelope, your letter was held up here with the rest until it was too late to get any copy to you. With hearty good wishes for the New Year, I am
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0866.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0866
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Will Owen Jones 1
- Date letter was written
- December 31 [1926]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured year of this letter is derived from its apparent place as part of a sequence with #0881, dated March 22, 1927.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
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.
Jones evidently wrote Cather asking for a letter commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Nebraska State Journal. See #0881.
Person Annotations
Jones, Will Owen (1862-1928). Newspaper editor. Will
Owen Jones was born in Wisconsin and came to Nebraska by 1880. He worked for
the Nebraska State Journal while attending the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, graduating in 1886. That year he became
city editor of the paper, then associate editor in 1889 (the year he married
pianist Edith M. Doolittle), and then managing editor in 1892. He was close
to Charles and Mariel Gere, the owners of the Nebraska
State Journal, and the Jones’s only child, Mariel Jones, was named
for Mrs. Gere. Cather took his journalism course at the university in 1893
and wrote to him often early in her career, although he could be severe in
his criticism of some of her work.
Place Annotations
