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 hate to be disobliging, and had your request come to me a year ago I should
certainly have given you permission to use the essay3
you speak of. But I am including this paper in a volume of
essays4 which Mr. Knopf5 is bringing
out this fall. I must therefore ask you, as a favor, that you will not include the
NOVEL DEÉMEUBLEÉ in your retrospective anthology. It would
certainly be very awkward for me to have the same essay appearing in two volumes6 in the same month.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1319.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1319
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Bruce Bliven 1
- Date letter was written
- June 13, 1936
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Benjamin D. Hitz Papers, 1913-1949 (Midwest.MS.Hitz-Cather), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Person Annotations
Bliven, Bruce (1889-1977). American journalist. Bruce Bliven’s family moved from Iowa to California after he graduated from high school in 1907. He began writing for newspapers while attending Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1911, and then wrote advertising copy and taught journalism at the University of Southern California, becoming director of its journalism department in 1914. He moved East, becoming managing editor of the New York Globe and in 1923 joining the staff of the New Republic, which published Cather’s essay “The Novel Démeublé” in 1922. He became editor-in-chief in 1930 and retired in 1953. He also free-lanced on a wide variety of topics for many magazines, including the New Yorker.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"The Novel Démeublé," New Republic (April 12, 1922) by Willa Cather
Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
The New Republic Anthology, 1915-1936 (1936) ; edited by Groff Conklin and Bruce Bliven and
