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 |
Just now3 I'm a carpenter, getting a lot of repairs made on my father4's home5 with the aid of very weak local talent. Toward spring, however, I may have something that you can show Dr. Leach6—not long, probably a two part story.
Yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0925.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0925
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Paul Revere Reynolds1
- Date letter was written
- January 23 [1928]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Paul R. Reynolds records, 1899-1980 (MS#1065), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
On 18 January 1928, Reynolds reported to Cather that Henry Goddard Leach wanted another story for The Forum but also suggested that if she would let him canvas other magazines, he could probably get a better price.
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
Person Annotations
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.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Leach, Henry Goddard (1880-1970). American author, educator, and editor. Leach (Princeton University BA 1903, Harvard University PhD 1908) was a leading authority on Scandinavian literature. He served as editor of The Forum from 1923 to 1940 and president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation from 1926 to 1947. The Forum serialized Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and published “Double Birthday” (1929) in two parts. When Granville Hicks used a review of Shadows on the Rock (1931) in the Forum to launch what Cather perceived as an attack on her personally, she was aggrieved but accepted Leach’s apparent apology. It is not clear when Cather and Leach first met, and their extant correspondence relates exclusively to his work as editor of the Forum. However, in the 1940s she called him an “old friend” and apparently saw him socially in New York City (#2191).
Place Annotations
