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 |
I found your letter3 awaiting me when I got back from Chicago4. As soon as possible I had a long talk with Alfred Knopf5, and I think he has written you regarding our decision. I feel more strongly than ever that I want to keep out of cheap editions. I certainly would use every means within my power to keep ANTONIA6 and SHADOWS ON THE ROCK7 from going into a cheap edition. As for DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP8, unfortunately, in a careless momen9t I consented to let it go into The Modern Library. Students, therefore, can buy that edition for ninety-nine cents. I certainly believe that a book of this sort is absolutely ruined for young readers by an introduction and explanatory notes.
But I cannot explain all my reasons very well by letter, and I am waiting until I next see you to tell you exactly how I feel in this matter and why I feel so. Since you seem to personally wish to make a cheap edition of the ARCHBISHOP, I awfully hate to refuse you - but I let the book go into The Modern Library simply because I hated to be disobliging, and the result has been a very considerable money loss both to Alfred Knopf and to me. My whole preference is to sell a few books and to make a dignified royalty on them; to have fewer readers and better readers. But there, I am becoming involved and I cannot really explain this properly by letter. I shall have to wait until I see you to justify my position.
Faithfully yours, Willa Cather rh!Somewhere
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1130.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1130
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 31, 1932
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 20 October 1932, Greenslet reported that he had met with Alfred Knopf the day before to discuss Knopf's allowing Houghton Mifflin to issue Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), originally published by Knopf, in its Riverside Literature Series. This proposal came in response to the College Entrance Board's placing My Ántonia, Shadows on the Rock, and Death Comes for the Archbishop on the list for the College Entrance Exam (Archbishop was designated "the subject of special study and examination") and the fact that Knopf had discontinued its own educational department. Citing the example of William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Greenslet promised high sales that would not diminish the sales of the ordinary trade edition.
On 21 November 1929, Cather signed and returned to Manley Aaron at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a letter of agreement for publication of Death Comes for the Archbishop in the Modern Library. She agreed to an early fall 1931 release of not fewer than 35,000 copies, for which she was to be paid six cents per copy.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
