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 |
GRAND MANAN2
NEW BRUNSWICK
CANADA August 3d My Dear Miss Piercy1:
You are quite at liberty to use3 anything you wish from the essay4 you mention. I have none of my own books here, but I should think the sketch of Claude Wheeler’s father in “One of Ours”5 rather better than the somewhat perfunctory one of St. Peter. “Tom Outland’s Story”6 I think pretty good narrative. I have no pages of manuscript with me. Does it matter much what students think about these things? The right ones know, by taste and instinct; the wrong ones will never know, really—which is well.
Very cordially yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0943.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0943
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Josephine K. Piercy1
- Date letter was written
- August 3, [1928]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's presence on Grand Manan in early August 1928 and by subsequent correspondence with Josephine Piercy in February 1929 concerning permissions to use Cather material in her anthology.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- McClure MSS. 1865-1949 (LMC 1687), Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, IN
Person Annotations
Piercy, Josephine Ketcham (1895-1995). American academic. Born in Indianapolis, IN, Josephine Piercy received a BA (1918) and MA (1919) from Indiana University, a second MA from Columbia University (1923), and a PhD from Yale University (1937). She began as an instructor at Indiana in 1926 and retired from there as a full professor in 1966. Her scholarly focus growing out of her doctoral work was early American literature, but she also edited Modern Writers at Work (1930 and later editions), an anthology for use in creative writing classes. Cather’s correspondence with Piercy about her potential inclusion in this anthology became contentious.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Modern Writers at Work (1930) by Josephine K. Piercy
"The Novel Démeublé," New Republic (April 12, 1922) by Willa Cather
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
"Tom Outland's Story," The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
