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 |
Indeed I know Charlton street—I once went house-hunting there. I am going out of town2 until after Christmas. I will write you as soon as I return and I hope you will find time to come in and have a cup of tea with me. I wonder if you are the "friend on the Post3" of whom my friends the Brewsters4 spoke to me in Naples5 six weeks ago?
Sincerely yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1280.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1280
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Henry Seidel Canby 1
- Date letter was written
- December 6 [1920]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather's reference to having recently seen Earl and Achsah Brewster in Naples, Italy, suggests that this letter was written in 1920.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Henry Seidel Papers (Henry Seidel Papers YCAL MSS 64), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Person Annotations
Canby, Henry Seidel (1878-1961). American critic and editor. Born to a prominent Wilmington, DE, family, Canby received a BA (1899) and PhD (1905) from Yale University. He began teaching English at Yale in 1900 and was editor of the Yale Review from 1911 to 1922. In 1920 he founded the Literary Review of the New York Post, which became an independent magazine, the Saturday Review of Literature, in 1924; he served as editor until 1936. He became editor in chief of the Book-of-the-Month Club on its founding in 1926. Canby married Marion Ponsonby Gause, also of Wilmington, in 1907, and they had two sons. Cather’s acquaintance with the Canbys seems to predate 1922, when her cordial correspondence with the Canbys began. In the Literary Review she published "The House on Charles Street" (1922) and in the Saturday Review a letter to Wilbur Cross on Shadows on the Rock (1931) and an essay on Thomas Mann (1936).
Barlow-Brewster, Achsah (1878-1945). Expatriate American painter.
Born in New Haven, CT, Achsah Brewster graduated in 1902 from Smith
College, where Edith Lewis had become her roommate in 1899, inaugurating a
long friendship. After college, Achsah moved to New York City to study
painting at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. After
she returned from a year of study in France, fellow student (and later poet)
Vachel Lindsay introduced her to Earl Brewster. She may have met Willa
Cather as early as 1904, when Cather, visiting New York from Pittsburgh,
stayed with Edith Lewis on Washington Square. In 1910, she and Earl Brewster
married and moved to Europe, returning to the U.S. only once, in 1923. From
1910 through 1935, they lived in various locations in France (where their
daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and in Italy (where they met D. H.
Lawrence and his wife Frieda in 1921), while also traveling widely in Europe
and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in
Ravello, Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with
Cather) and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early
1920s, they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. In
1935, Achsah and Earl moved to the Himalayan region of India, where she died
ten years later after a long illness.
Brewster, Earl (1878-1957). Expatriate American painter. Born
in Chagrin Falls, OH, Earl Brewster attended the Cleveland Institute of Art
for a year before moving to New York City in 1899 to study at the Art
Students League and the New York School of Art. He married fellow painter
Achsah Barlow in 1910. They immediately moved to Europe, returning to the
U.S. only once, in 1923. From 1910 through 1935, Earl and Achsah lived in
France (where their daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and Italy (where they
met D. H. Lawrence in 1921), while traveling widely in Europe and to Ceylon
(Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in Ravello,
Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with Cather)
and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early 1920s,
they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. Earl had
begun studying eastern religions early in his life, including the Vedanta
school of Hindu religious philosophy, and he incorporated Buddhist
iconography into his paintings. In 1935, the Brewsters moved to the
Himalayan region of India, where he died more than two decades later.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New York Evening Post
