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 just returned from a hurried trip to the Pacific coast, and find your very kind letter awaiting me. I should, of course, be very pleased to have your forthcoming booklet4 on Housman5 dedicated6 to me. But since your letter is dated February 22, the book is probably out by this time.
The Housman number7 of the Quarterly8 I read with great interest before I went West9. Your account10 of your dinner with Housman at Cambridge is especially revelatory of his sardonic kind of humor. I am glad also to have the two photographs11 of him. Do you know the drawing12 of Housman in William Archer's13 “Modern English Poets?”14
Sincerely yours Willa Cather Mr. Cyril Clemens1 Webster Groves 3 Missouri NEW YORK, N. Y.2 MAR 1937 10 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1305.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1305
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Cyril Clemens1
- Date letter was written
- March 15 [1937]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
The dedication to An Evening with A. E. Housman by Cyril Clemens reads: "DEDICATED with her kind permission to WILLA CATHER"
The "A. E. Housman Memorial Number" of the Mark Twain Quarterly (Vol. 1, no. 2) was published in Winter 1936 and featured essays by a number of people including Cyril Clemens.
Cather appears to have spent the entire winter in New York.
The "A. E. Housman Memorial Number" of the Mark Twain Quarterly (Vol. 1, no. 2) contained two images of Housman: his 1929 passport photo and a photo from 1894 captioned "The Housman of Shropshire Lad days."
This woodcut of A. E. Housman appeared in the Housman chapter of William Archer's Poets of the Younger Generation (1902).
Person Annotations
Clemens, Cyril (1902-1999). American biographer. A distant cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Cyril Clemens was born in St. Louis, MO, to James R. and Kathryn T. Clemens, and received his BA and MA from Washington University (St. Louis). He founded the International Mark Twain Society in 1930 and edited its journal, the Mark Twain Quarterly, from 1936-1982. He wrote biographies and biographical sketches of his famous cousin and other literary figures, including G.K. Chesterton and A.E. Housman. The Mark Twain Society awarded a medal to Cather in 1934; Clemens asked Cather for contributions to the journal and pressed her for information about her 1902 visit to Housman.
Housman, Alfred Edward (1859-1936) (“A. E.”). British poet and
scholar. Born in Worcestershire, England, the eldest son of a
solicitor and his wife, Housman won a scholarship in 1877 to St. John’s
College, Oxford University, where he studied classics. Although he was a
promising scholar, he failed to obtain his degree and took a job at the
patent office in London. He continued as an independent scholar, and the
brilliance of his work led to his appointment in 1892 as professor of Latin
at University College, London, and in 1911 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He
published A Shropshire Lad (1896), his most famous
collection of poems, at his own expense, but its reputation steadily
increased. Cather discovered Housman’s poems soon after they appeared in the
U.S., and they influenced much of her early poetry. Shropshire was one of
the first destinations on her European trip in 1902, and Housman was one of
the people she most wanted to meet. The meeting was awkward and became the
subject of speculation and stories by others in later years.
Archer, William (1856-1924). Scottish writer, critic, and translator.
Born in Perth, Scotland, William Archer spent several years of his
childhood in Norway with his grandparents, who had settled there; his
knowledge of Norwegian later enabled him to make his influential
translations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. Archer began his career in journalism
while studying at Edinburgh University. Moving to London around 1879, he
became a drama critic and translated Ibsen’s Pillars of
Society and arranged for its first English production in 1880. A
champion of modern dramatists such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and
J.M. Synge, Archer opposed censorship in the theater. However, during World
War I, he worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau. Cather knew of
Archer’s translations of Ibsen while she was at the University of Nebraska
in the 1890s; she met Archer in 1908 on a visit to London for McClure’s Magazine, which commissioned articles from
him. Although no correspondence between Cather and Archer has been located,
she counted him as a friend and recounted their friendship in a letter to
Ferris Greenslet (#1458).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
An Evening with A. E. Housman (1937) by Cyril Clemens
Mark Twain Quarterly
"Housman as a Conversationalist," Mark Twain Quarterly (Winter, 1936) by Cyril Clemens
Poets of the Younger Generation (1902) by William Archer
