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 |
You've certainly done this operation3 as gently as it could be done, and you've been noble about keeping away from trivial personal stories,- of which you could tell so many! I've corrected two dates; I was born December 7, 18764.
Any summing up of one's books sounds strange to one, because
one was never conscious of doing things consistently,- each book seemed a totally
new thing, an escape, indeed, from the others. But if there is a common denominator,
it is Escape, and you've hit on it5.
When I get on a Santa Fe train now and swing west to the coast, I often waken in my
berth with that glorious feeling I had in childhood, the certainty of countless
miles of empty country and open sky and wind and night on every side of me. It's the
happiest feeling I ever have. And when I am most enjoying the lovely thing the world
isf full of, it's then I am often most homesick
for just that emptiness and that untainted air.
I'm rushing this back to you with my deepest thinks
f for your protecting arm.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1161.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1161
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- [February 16, 1933]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter was written the day before #1162, dated February 17, 1933 (see #1165).
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (MSS-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Though born in 1873, as early as 1900 Cather's birthdate began to be publicized as 1876, and her gravestone also erroneously lists 1876 as her birth year.
Canfield Fisher's article makes the argument that "the one real subject of all [Cather's] books is the effect a new country--our new country--has on people transplanted to it from the old traditions of a stable, complex civilization."
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Willa Cather, Daughter of the Frontier," New York Herald Tribune (May 28, 1933), by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
