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 |
Thank you for your very courteous
letter3. I write short stories very seldom; even "long short stories", I do not
write very often. When I do write one I simply give it to the Knopf office and they
serialize it for me. This saves me a great deal of trouble, as
and the office manages to get very good
prices for me. If you want a story of mine, why not speak4 to Alfred Knopf5 some
time when you meet him.? I haven't anything completed, even for
him, just now.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1149.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1149
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred Dashiell1
- Date letter was written
- January 16, 1933
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Archives of Charles Scribner's Sons (C0101), Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ
Individual Annotations
On 4 January 1933, Dashiell wrote expressing admiration for the stories published in Obscure Destinies (1932) and envy of the magazines that first published them. He sought a "long story" by Cather as part of Scribner's Magazine's program of publishing "four or more distinguished stories" a year.
On 24 January 1933, Dashiell wrote that he would follow her suggestion, but no Cather story in Scribner's resulted from such a meeting.
Person Annotations
Dashiell, Alfred Sheppard (1901-1970). American magazine editor. Born in Maryland, Alfred Dashiell came to New York City as a young man, joining the staff of Scribner’s Magazine and in 1930 succeeding Robert Bridges as managing editor. In 1933, he unsuccessfully solicited a story from Cather. In 1940 he became managing editor of Reader’s Digest, retiring in 1965. Dashiell co-authored A Study of the Short Story (1935) with Henry Seidel Canby.
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
