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 would like so much to oblige you5, but all the conditions6 are against my doing so. One of my brothers has come on from Wyoming7 and we are just starting for a rough trip up in the Lake of St. John country. I have been seeing something of the rougher part of Canada8 & the Gulf of St. Laurence this summer, and I have not the mood, or the time, or even the tools for writing. If I wrote anything about Mrs. Wharton9 at all, I would want to give it time and pains.
Sincerely yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1371.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1371
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Maxwell Perkins1
- Date letter was written
- [August 27 to September 4, 1937]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather was replying to Perkins's August 25, 1937, letter. The conjectured week-long date range begins several days after that, reflecting the infrequent mail service to Grand Manan.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Archives of Charles Scribner's Sons (C0101), Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ
Individual Annotations
On 25 August 1937, Perkins wrote Cather to propose that she write an introduction for Edith Wharton's novel Ethan Frome (1911).
In 1937, Willa Cather's nieces Margaret and Elizabeth Cather, daughters of her brother Roscoe, visited Grand Manan. In the middle of their visit, Roscoe and his wife, Meta, relocated from Wyoming to California. Willa Cather stayed on Grand Manan through mid-September.
Person Annotations
Perkins, William Maxwell Evarts (1884-1947) (“Maxwell”). American editor. Born in New York City, Maxwell Perkins received a BA in economics from Harvard in 1907 and thereafter reported for the New York Times until 1910. From 1911 until his death, he worked for the publishing firm of Charles Scribner’s Sons, first as advertising manager and later as editor, secretary, director of the corporation, and vice president. As editor, Perkins was credited with discovering Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe. He wrote to Cather in 1937 in his editorial capacity to invite her to contribute an introduction to an edition of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome soon after Wharton’s death.
Wharton, Edith (1862-1937). American author. Born Edith
Newbold Jones to well-to-do fashionable parents from old New York City
families and educated at home, she married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885.
Unhappy in her marriage (she divorced her husband in 1913), she pursued
authorship, first writing about interior decoration and travel and then
short stories. The publication of The House of Mirth
(1905), her second novel, marked her emergence as a major novelist and
solidified an important friendship with Henry James. She was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence (1920).
Wharton completed construction of “The Mount” in Lenox, MA, in 1902 but
primarily lived in France. Critics often classed Cather and Wharton together
as the best American women novelists of their time—a comparison that
also appeared in promotional copy for Cather’s novels—but there is no
evidence that they ever met. Cather’s occasional public statements about
Wharton suggest ambivalence, as when in “My First Novels (There Were Two)”
(1932) she classes Wharton with James as novelists she imitated in Alexander’s Bridge (1912).
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
