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 have been in the far North, and your letter of a month ago has just reached me. You have doubtless sent the book to Mr. Barrie5 long ago, and I am sorry to have missed the chance to inscribe it for him. I shall be here only a few days and then am off into the wilds again. When I get back to the United States6 again I would be happy to send Sir James some other book of mine, if I can think of one that might interest him.
Thank you for your kind words about "Antonia"7, Mrs. Meloney, and believe me
Very cordially yours Willa Cather (Editorial Office)Personal Mrs. William Brown Meloney1 New York "Herald-Tribune"3 New York, N. Y.4 U. S. A. NORTH HEAD N.B.2 34 10:00 AM[?]
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1233.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1233
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Marie Mattingly Meloney1
- Date letter was written
- August 26 [1934]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Marie Mattingly Meloney papers, 1891-1943 (MS#0864), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY
Person Annotations
Meloney, Marie Mattingly (1883-1943). Editor and journalist. Born in Kentucky, Marie Mattingly became a reporter while still in her teens, working for the Washinton Post, the New York World, and the New York Sun until her marriage to William Meloney in 1904. She became editor of Woman’s Magazine in 1914 and an associate editor of Everybody’s in 1917. She also edited the Delineator (1920-1926), the New York Herald Tribune’s Sunday Magazine (1926-1943), and This Week (1934-1943). Meloney became a well-known personality and a crusader for various causes. Cather corresponded with her in the early 1930s when Meloney sent a copy of My Ántonia to James Barrie.
Barrie, James Matthew (1860-1937). British journalist, novelist, and
playwright. Barrie is best known for his character Peter Pan,
first created in the play Peter Pan (1904) and later
the subject of the novels Peter Pan in Kensington
Gardens (1906) and Peter Pan and Wendy
(1911). His earliest success as an author was in regional sketches based on
his childhood memories of Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, Scotland. His novel Sentimental Tommy (1896), about a boy who clings to
childhood, seems to have inspired the title of Cather's early story "Tommy
the Unsentimental" (1896). After establishing contact with Cather indirectly
in the early 1930s through Stephen Tennant, Barrie began corresponding with
her directly, and Barrie expressed particular admiration for Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and My Ántonia (1918). Of the latter, Barrie wrote to
her, "Your Antonia? No, she is my Antonia, and though I have just found her
I have always known her" (#1870). After his death Cather stated that she had
several letters from Barrie in her possession, but no such letters have been
found.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
New York Herald Tribune
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
