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 |
ON THE MAIN ROAD
TO YELLOWSTONE PARK
CASPER, WYOMING2 June 26 Dear Mr. Jones1;
I've been travelling—the proofs3 missed me4, but seem all right. I am so happy that you and the Gere family5 liked the sketch of Mr. Gere6. I only wish I'd had time to do it more completely.
With greetings to you all Willa Cather The hotel Henning CASPER, WYOMING Wyoming's Leading Hotel Mr. Will Owen Jones1 Nebraska State Journal7 Lincoln8 Nebraska [missing]&Casper2 JUN 27 1927Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0889.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0889
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Will Owen Jones 1
- Date letter was written
- June 26 [1927]
- Place letter was written
- Casper, Wyoming, 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
See #0881. Cather's original letter is dated March 22, but was published with a June 2 date line.
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.
Gere, Mariel Clapham (1874-1960). Cather’s university
friend; a teacher. Mariel Gere, eldest daughter of Charles H.
and Mariel C. Gere, born in Lincoln, NE, entered the University of
Nebraska's prep school in the same year Cather did. She and her sisters
visited Cather several times in Red Cloud, NE. Both were members of the
Union Literary Society until Gere joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in
1892. Gere graduated in the science course and taught chemistry at Lincoln
High until 1941. She also served on the Lincoln City Library board for many
years. Cather and Gere remained friends and correspondents; Gere defended
Cather from accusations that she had been arrogant and friendless during her
university years.
Gere, Ellen Bladen (1875-1941) (“Ned” or “Neddums”). Cather's friend. Ellen Gere, the second daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, with her sisters, and Cather included her in her correspondence in the 1890s. Ellen Gere entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln around 1892, but graduated with the class of 1899. In the 1920s she adopted two children, believing, with her friend Dorothy Canfield, that women who wanted to be mothers did not have to be married.
0050
Gere, Frances C. (1877-1965). Cather's friend. Frances Gere,
the youngest child of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln,
NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1894 and graduated in 1898.
Like her sisters, Mariel and Ellen, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma
sorority and lived in Lincoln the remainder of her life.
Gere, Charles Henry (1838-1904). Newspaper publisher; Cather's
employer during college. Charles H. Gere, born in New York,
graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, in 1861 and joined the
Union army. In 1865 he moved to Nebraska, where his family had moved.
Politically active in the Republican Party, he moved to Lincoln, NE, and
founded the city’s first newspaper, the Nebraska State
Journal. He married Mariel E. Clapham of Washington, D.C., in 1871.
While serving as a representative in the first state legislature, he helped
found the University of Nebraska, for which he served as regent from 1882 to
1892. Cather wrote for his newspaper when she was a university student, and
became a friend of Charles and Mariel Gere’s three daughters, Mariel, Ellen,
and Frances. She remembered Charles Gere’s “kindness, his easy wit, the ease
and charm of his personality.”
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Congratulations from Willa Cather," Nebraska State Journal (July 24, 1927), by Willa Cather
Nebraska State Journal
