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 hope you will not mind that I autographed the book3 to you personally, instead of to the Society. I imagine that the library of the Society is in your care, at any rate.
I do not know Miguel Lamy4 of Santa Feé5.
I am sorry that I cannot write a few words on Chesterton6 for the next number of your quarterly7. In my new contract8 with Alfred Knopf9, I pledge myself to do no incidental writing of any kind. Everything that I write goes to him first and he disposes of it as he deems wise. This saves me a great deal of trouble. Requests for "just a few words" from college magazines, Catholic papers, library publications, publishers trade journals, and all the book clubs and students clubs in the country10 come in to us all the time, and complying with them would amount to an occupation in itself.
Very cordially yours,Willa CatherP. S. It is not because I am so "popular" that I am thus tormented for the "personal word, but because I have lived, for a time, in so many places.
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1362.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1362
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Cyril Clemens 1
- Date letter was written
- April 9, 1937
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
Copies of Cather's contracts with Knopf do not survive, but there is no suggestion in her correspondence with the firm that she signed a contract with such a provision. Rather, she signed contracts concerning the publication of individual books.
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.
Lamy, Miguel (c. 1860-1938). American laborer. Lamy was born in the Tewa Pueblo of San Ildefonso located on the Rio Grande River in northern New Mexico and was reportedly adopted by Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy when he was found injured. In 1898, Lamy married Mercedes Ramirez, with whom he had five children. For much of his life, he lived near Santa Fe, NM, working variously as a hunter, a rancher, and a salesman. In 1936, the Santa Fe New Mexican purported that Lamy inspired the character Jacinto in Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1874-1936) (“G.K.”). English writer and critic. Born and educated in London, England, Chesterton at first studied art, but turned to journalism by the mid-1890s. He married Frances Blogg in 1901, who brought him back to the Anglican church. Chesterton’s wit, often founded on paradox, made his writings on politics, literature, and religion popular; in 1922 he became a Roman Catholic. His Father Brown series of detective short stories (1911-1935) were popular and are important in the history of the genre. Chesterton also had a weekly newspaper column for many years, and a weekly BBC radio talk from 1931 until his death. He was a friend of writers as diverse as George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and H.G. Wells. Cather turned down an invitation to write an article on Chesterton after his death.
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
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
Mark Twain Quarterly
