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 |
I have just returned to town for a few days and find your letter awaiting me. I have been wanting to write you for a long while, to thank you for your kindness in delivering to me Mr. Barrie3's gracious message about MY ANTONIA4. Please accept my belated thanks for your friendly office in sending me an extract from his letter to you.
Regarding the suggestion you make to me, I am afraid I can only shake my
head. I never have written, and I very much doubt if I could write, a story at the suggestion of
another person. I have never even tried to
write a story that was not the outcome of some rather sharp personal
experience; and, of course, you know as well as I, one cannot go out and
hunt for personal experiences. or
impressions. Everything that one goes out and hunts for is
second-hand—and
second-rate. I have been very much interested in looking over the copies of
THIS WEEK5, and when I return to
New York2 next November, I shall
follow its career with every good wish in the world.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1261.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1261
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Marie Mattingly Meloney1
- Date letter was written
- May 29, 1935
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- 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
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
This Week Magazine
