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 |
Welcome home to you both3, and thanks awfully for your note about encyclopedias. The Britannica4 is the one I mean to get but several wise people, among them Mr. Strunsky5, have told me that the editions after the ninth are not so good - many errors in proof reading, etc., so I think I shall try to get a second-hand one.
Yes, I've had an awful bother with a sprained
tendon6 and have been in splints six weeks,—and will
be for some weeks to come. All kinds of doctors, but you can't hurry tendons. I
simply have not been able to work at all, and I very much doubt if Alfred7 gets his new
book8 this fall.
With friendliest greetings to Mrs. Mencken and yourself.
Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1222.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1222
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- H. L. Mencken 1
- Date letter was written
- April 20, 1934
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- H.L. Mencken papers, 1905-1956 (MssCol 1962), New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
In February 1934 Cather sprained a tendon in her left wrist while hanging a picture. It got inflamed, and she had to wear a splint throughout the winter and spring.
Person Annotations
Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956) ("H. L."). American author, editor,
and journalist. Born in Baltimore, MD, into a German immigrant
family, Henry Louis Mencken worked in his father’s cigar factory for two
years after graduating high school. At age eighteen he became a cub reporter
for the Baltimore Herald, rising quickly through the
journalistic ranks while also publishing poetry and short stories in
national magazines. He became literary editor of the Smart
Set magazine in 1909, later becoming co-editor with George Jean
Nathan, while continuing to be a prolific and bold social and literary
critic. He and Nathan founded the American Mercury
magazine in 1923. Mencken reviewed many of Cather’s novels, and she began
corresponding with him about her work early in her career as a novelist. Her
stories “Her Boss” (1919) and “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) appeared in the
Smart Set, and from 1920 Cather and Mencken
shared Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as a publisher (Mencken was a close personal
friend of both Alfred and Blanche Knopf). Mencken was one of the strongest
voices in favor of My Ántonia (1918), and Alfred
Knopf commissioned him to write an appreciation of Cather for The Borzoi 1920; however, Cather’s attempt to manage
his response to One of Ours (1922) by writing him in
advance of publication and soliciting a review failed—Mencken wrote one of
the most stingingly negative reviews of it. Mencken fell out of public favor
in the early 1930s but became popular again with the publication of his
fourth revision of The American Language in 1936,
which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. He spent the final
years of his life unable to write or speak as the result of a massive stroke
in 1948.
Mencken, Sara Powell Haardt (1898-1935). American writer and professor of English. Born in Alabama to German-American parents, Sara Haardt graduated in 1920 from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD, where she was hired to teach. She had already begun her literary career in college, with essays, reviews, and short stories, many set in the South. Sara Haardt met H. L. Mencken in 1923, and they married in 1930. She died of complications from tuberculosis, which she had contracted as a girl. It is unclear if she and Cather ever met, but Cather sent friendly greetings to her in letters.
Strunsky, Siméon (1879-1948). Russian-American editor and writer. Born in Russia, Siméon Strunsky came to the U.S. as a child. He graduated from Columbia University in 1900. He became an editorial writer and then literary editor of the New York Evening Post and later editorial writer for the New York Times. His second marriage, in 1910, was to the Russian-born Jewish activist Manya Gordon, with whom he had two children. Cather mentions having been at a dinner at the Strunskys, where she met Allan Nevins.
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
Encyclopædia Britannica
Lucy Gayheart (1935), by Willa Cather
