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 |
and Annex3 ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.2 AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR September 17 My dear Mr. Asker1;
The story4 follows the pattern of history very closely. A recent review5 in the Boston Transcript6 put the truth quite fairly7, if you will take the trouble to look it up. I think it was Sept 10th.
Very cordially yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0895.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0895
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Frank Asker 1
- Date letter was written
- September 17 [1927]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the September 2, 1927, publication of Death Comes for the Archbishop and Cather's reference to a September 10, 1927, review of the novel.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Benjamin D. Hitz Papers, 1913-1949 (Midwest.MS.Hitz-Cather), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
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).
In Dorothy Gilman's highly positive review of Death Comes for the Archbishop, she says it is "not a novel" but rather a "historical biography dealing imaginatively though accurately with the life of a Catholic missionary."
Person Annotations
Asker, Frank. Cather addressed a letter answering a query about Death Comes for the Archbishop to Frank Asker, but no further information is known about him.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
"Willa Cather Writes a Fictional Biography," Boston Evening Transcript (September 10, 1927) by Dorothy Foster Gilman
Boston Evening Transcript
