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 never take the time to write to my secretary3—I telegraph her. She has no key to my apartment4. She has an office of her own. Therefore I cannot tell her to hunt for a photograph. Requests like yours5 take a great deal of my time—so much of it that I have to go out of the world, to New Foundland6, for example, to get any work done.
I find in my manuscript case a passport photograph7 taken eight (8) years ago. I have no wish to appear in your book8 as younger than I am, but this is the only photograph I can lay my hand on at present. You see, my dear sir, if I had allowed my secretary's first reply to you to stand, I would have saved myself a good deal of trouble!
Very cordially yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1237.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1237
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- József Reményi 1
- Date letter was written
- October 12 [1934]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter is part of a sequence with #1236, and its conjectured year follows the same logic.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Jozsef Remenyi Correspondence 1922-1962 (MS 3198), Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH
Individual Annotations
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.
In #1236, Cather told Reményi she had no photograph with her and claimed to have recently been in New Foundland.
A copy of Cather's 1920 passport picture.
Person Annotations
Reményi, József (1892-1956). Hungarian-American writer and professor. Born in Pozsony, Hungary, József Reményi studied at universities in Budapest and Vienna before becoming a journalist. In 1914 he emigrated to Cleveland, OH, where he wrote for a Hungarian-language newspaper and married actress Margaret Papaloczy in 1918. Remenyi wrote novels, some with a Cleveland setting, which were published in Budapest. In 1929 he began teaching European and comparative literature at Western Reserve University; he also sought to introduce American writers to Hungarians. He corresponded with Cather about including one of her works in his anthology of translations of American fiction Mai Amerikai Dekameron (Modern American Fiction) (1935).
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Mai Amerikai dekameron (1935), edited by József Reményi
