Harold Goddard Rugg (November 10, 1934)

#1239: Willa Cather to Harold Goddard Rugg, November 10, 1934

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ November 10, 1934. My dear Mr. Rugg¹:

As you suggest, the "unknown Cather" is certainly a bookseller's blurb. While I was Managing Editor³ of McClure's⁴, I had charge of the publication of Miss Milmine's⁵ manuscript⁶ - cut it a great deal and rewrote some portions in order to modify it, but I am very unwilling to claim the authorship of the book⁷ (which on the whole is very badly written), and it annoys me very much to have it put over on me.

Please consider this letter confidential, as the more I protest against this undeserved honor, the more fiercely partisans take up clubs about it.

Very cordially yours, Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1239.xml
Letter identifier: 1239
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Harold Goddard Rugg ¹
Date letter was written: November 10, 1934
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Harold Rugg Papers (MS-1133), Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, Hanover, NH

Individual Annotations

Hired as part of the editorial staff in 1906, Cather was managing editor of McClure's Magazine from 1908 until she resigned from the position at the end of 1911.

Person Annotations

2144

Rugg, Harold Goddard (1883-1957). American librarian, historian, and botanist. Harold Goddard Rugg was born in Hartland, VT, to Julia Augusta Hager and David Fletcher Rugg. He attended high school at Black River Academy in Ludlow, VT, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1906, at which point he began his lifelong career at the Dartmouth library. While working as a librarian, Rugg acquired a wide variety of historical documents and Vermontiana, which he eventually donated to the Vermont Historical Society. He also spent a great deal of his career preserving and promoting the work of Vermont authors, most notably Robert Frost. Outside of his work as a librarian, Rugg was a devoted fern hunter and gardener. He published many articles on his international fern expeditions, and he served as the president of the Vermont Botanical Society and Hanover Garden Club, as well as the Vice-President of the American Fern Society. Rugg corresponded with Cather about setting up a winter lecture engagement in 1922 and wrote to her again in 1934 inquiring about her contributions to The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1907).

1674

Adams, Georgine Milmine Welles (1874-1950). Canadian-American journalist. Born in Ontario, Canada, Georgine Milmine was the editor of the women’s page of the Syracuse (NY) Herald in 1905 when she married the newspaper’s managing editor, Benjamin Welles. From c. 1903 to 1906, she researched the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and sold her exposé of Eddy to McClure’s Magazine. Burton Hendrick, Will Irwin, Willa Cather, and others on the magazine’s staff verified her research, conducted additional research, and collaboratively rewrote Milmine’s account before it appeared under Milmine’s name in McClure’s from January 1907 to June 1908. After Benjamin Welles’ 1911 death, Georgine married Arthur Adams, with whom she moved to Falmouth, MA, in 1937. She and her second husband are buried in Auburn, NY, where they lived at the time of their marriage.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Work Annotations

McClure's Magazine

"The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science," McClure's Magazine (1907 to 1908), by Georgine Milmine

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909), by Georgine Milmine