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 |
APR 30 1931
Filed by _____ April 28 My Dear Blanche1;
Will you manage to get the enclosed to Van Loon3 for me? I don't know his publishers, but he's done something awfully nice for me, and I want to thank him.
By the way, there is something of mine4 in the May
Atlantic5 you might like to see, as it's old
Virginia6 in tone. The explanation of me
in the "Contributors' Columb
Column"7 at the back of the magazine is amusing8. I'm well and lazy and am really enjoying life now
that I've got the Catholic errors in "Shadows"9 corrected. I'm heartily ashamed of having made them!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1049.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1049
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- April 28 [1931]
- Place letter was written
- Pasadena, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Records (MS-00062), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
Individual Annotations
Reporting on the doings of contributors to the magazine in a long paragraph, the report on Cather comes last: "Willa Cather is--well, Willa Cather."
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Van Loon, Hendrik Willem (1882-1944). Dutch-American author and illustrator. Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Hendrik Van Loon attended the Noorthey Institutue and emigrated to the U.S. in 1902 to study at Cornell University. Van Loon first worked as a journalist for the Associated Press. After earning his PhD from the University of Munich in 1911, he wrote his first book, The Fall of the Dutch Republic (1913). Naturalized as an American citizen in 1919, Van Loon briefly taught at Cornell, served as head of the Department of Social Sciences at Antioch College from 1921 to 1922, and was an associate editor of the Baltimore Sun from 1923 to 1924. Van Loon won the first Newbery Medal for The Story of Mankind (1921) and also wrote The Short History of Discovery (1917), Ancient Man (1920), and Tolerance (1925). Willa Cather wrote Van Loon in 1943 that The Story of the Bible (1923) gave her “great pleasure” (#1608). Van Loon contributed to the Dutch resistance during WWII and was later knighted by Queen Wihelmina.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Poor Marty," Atlantic Monthly (May 1931), by Willa Cather
Atlantic Monthly
"The Contributor's Column," Atlantic Monthly (May 1931)
Shadows on the Rock (1931), by Willa Cather
