Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 hate to send you1 such a beastly slovenly letter, but my own typewriter is not here and none of my writing tools are unpacked. I using the carpenter's pen.
With many apologies W. S. C. FG ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Dear Mr. Greenslet1;Excuse old machine,- only one at hand. This morning I received from a
Miss Hahn3, with no sort of letter4 or apology, a
barbarousliy reconstructed version of "Antonia."5 You spoke to me of using a portion
of the book, some twenty pages; you did not mention such a horror as a
skeletonoized version of the whole novel. The lady has
tried to make it a story of action; now it was never meant to be a story of
action.
I had decided, after your talk with me, to allow your educational department
to use the first thirty pages6
of the book, minus the introduction7. If it would be an accommodation to you, personally, I would still be
willing to allow that, on condition that there shall be no cuts at al all in the text, and that
this lady shall not write the in introduction.
Can't we just drop the whole matter8, anyway? You tell me they want something of 'mine'. Then your educators go and make this text as much like Zane Grey9 as possible. The reconstruction by Miss Hahn has neither Zane Grey's merits nor mine.
Really, my dear F.G., you've never
treated "Antonia" very gallantly. You are always trying to do her in and
make ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ her cheap. (That's exaggeration, of course, but I'm really
very much annoyed.) ButAnd you know how you've suggested
cheap editiond, film possibilities, etc. Antonia had done well enough by her
publishers as
she
is , not in the cut rate drugstores or
re-written by miss Hahn. She made her way b
by being what she is, not by being the compromise her publishers have
several times tried to make her. Even a cut in price would be a compromise
in the case of that particular book, I think. And as to a cut in text,
reducing the whole book to some few thousand words - - -! Those horrible boil-downs of "Notre Dame
de Paris"10 and "Adam Bede"11
that
which are handed out to children are poison, as you well know.
I'm in my new house12, but not unpacked, hence this untidy machine letter.
You see I don't want to go into a book that is made up of reconstructions of
this kind, where the text is boiled down. It doesn't give youngsters ve even a chance to come in contact with the
writing personality of a single one of the writers presented to them in this
packing-house form. I think
it's the lowest trick ever put over on young people.
Enraged though I am, I'm still your very good friend, and I send you good New Year wishes from my heart. Only let me hear no more of Miss Hahn and her stupid, brutal trade.
Faithfully (and affectionately) yours Willa CatherMy new apartment will be ever so nice when it's done.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1144.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1144
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto only of first leaf and typewritten on recto only of second and third leaves.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- December 30 [1932]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letter from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- 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 14 November 1932 Greenslet wrote that Cather would "hear from us later in regard to the question of giving the school children of the country a taste of MY ANTONIA." As he explained on 31 December 1932, he had written a cover letter to accompany Hahn's adaptation, which had been sent to her c/o of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (because of her move), and the letter and book had evidently gotten separated. Because he sent the office carbon of his original letter to Cather, his explanation has not survived.
That is, chapters I through III of Book I, "The Shimerdas." In these chapters, Jim Burden, an orphan from Virginia, arrives in Nebraska on the same train as the Shimerdas, an immigrant family from Bohemia. In Chapter III, Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda, who are both children, meet for the first time.
In the Introduction, Jim Burden meets an unnamed childhood friend from Nebraska on a train, and they talk about Ántonia Shimerda. The adult Jim is the narrator of the rest of the novel.
Hahn's condensed My Ántonia was not published.
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
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.
Hahn, Julia Letheld (1891-1942). American educator, author, and editor. Julia Hahn attended Indiana State Teacher’s College and earned her PhD from Columbia University in 1931. She served as head of the kindergarten-primary department in Minnesota in 1921, the kindergarten-primary critic in Los Angeles, CA, in 1922, and the division supervising principal of the District of Columbia in 1931. She also lectured extensively and wrote a number of children’s books including Neighbors Near and Far (1935), Tales and Travels (1938), and Everyday Friends (1935). Hahn edited the series Child Development Readers for Houghton Mifflin and sought to adapt My Ántonia (1918) for the series, but Cather rejected her attempt.
Grey, Pearl Zane (1872-1939). American writer of Westerns.
Grey was born in Zanesville, OH, a city founded by one of his
ancestors. As a child he loved baseball, fishing, and writing; he attended
the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, graduating in
1896. Like his father, he practiced dentistry, but he also wrote,
persevering despite many rejections. His first published book, Heritage of the Desert (1910) was followed by his
most popular novel Riders of the Purple Sage (1912).
Many of his long string of popular novels were made into films. Grey and his
family lived in California after 1918, but he travelled frequently to
unspoiled places. Cather never met Grey but knew his reputation as a popular
novelist of the American West.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) by Victor Hugo
Adam Bede (1859) by George Eliot
