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 |
For heaven's sake let's prevent this outrage and swindle4 if it is possible! Why don't you send Mr. Allan5's letter to Harcourt6 and ask him to put a stop7 to this project8? Ask him to telephone Alfred Knopf9; surely two reputable publishers will know some way of putting a stop to this silly business. At worst, they can buy him off.
Oh, but I'm enjoying the cool and solitude up here2! After Pasadena10 it's like drinking water when you're thirsty. There has never been a newspaper man on the island. The nice carpenter11 who built my house and has taken care of it for four years, said gently the other day that he wished he knew what paper I wrote for,as he would like to subscribe for it. You see I have found a place where I'm let alone. I will have to start for California12 early in the fall. Mother13 seems to grow a little weaker all the time now. I'm so glad you are having a lovely family summer; they are the nicest kind. I had them for years and years, thank God! Now I must rush this off to you, as the mail boat goes out from this island only three times a week.
With my love Willa Dorothy Canfield Fisher1 Arlington3 Vermont U.S.A. NORTH HEAD, N.B.2 AUG 15 31 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1069.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1069
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- August 14 [1931]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher (MSS-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Allan was seeking to republish Cather and Canfield Fisher's co-authored story "The Fear That Walks by Noonday" (1895).
In her 4 September 1931 letter to Allan, Canfield Fisher gave him permission to publish the story in a limited edition for collectors. Allan's edition was limited to 30 copies.
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Allan, Ralph. American bookseller. In 1931, Ralph Allan of the Phoenix Book Shop at 41 East 49th Street in New York City published a very limited edition of The Fear That Walks by Noonday by Cather and Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a reprint of a short story originally published in the student periodical The Sombrero (1895). Allan wrote a foreword for the volume. No other information about him has been found.
Harcourt, Alfred (1881-1954). American publisher. Harcourt co-founded the publishing company Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, in 1919. As a publisher, he promoted American Modernist writers such as Gertrude Stein and John Dos Passos and also published the work of Cather’s friend, middlebrow novelist, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who was also Harcourt’s personal friend. When Cather met Harcourt at a party in 1922, she wrote Fisher that Harcourt was “a new type of publisher...and a very engaging one” (#0601).
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Green, Charles Edward (1866-1954). Canadian carpenter. Born in Castalia on the island of Grand Manan, NB, Canada, Charles Green worked as a carpenter in North Head, Grand Manan. Willa Cather and Edith Lewis commissioned him and Oscar Locke to build their cottage at Whale Cove on Grand Manan, modeling it on the Orchardside Cottage they had earlier rented from the proprietors of the Whale Cove Inn. Construction took place in 1926-1927; Green also worked on subsequent improvements and repairs to the cottage. Charles and his wife Wilhelmina Chase Green had one child, Mark Needham Green, who committed suicide in 1939. All three are buried in the North Head Cemetery.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
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
The Fear That Walks by Noonday (1931) by Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield
