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 remember your room at the Ritz was full of your own[?] garden flowers.
⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ November 8 Dearest Zoe1;The flowers reached me three days ago, and tonight they are as fresh as if
they had just come out of your garden. And how did you know that I
especially love the leaves and the balls of the eucalyptus tree? Do send me
some of the balls or m nutlets in late
November. They keep fragrant all the winter through.
I hope these white flowers 2 mean forgiveness, Zoë. I doubt if I had a right to write you as I did3. Maybe you don't mind being pummelled by a lot of New Deal boys who are out to knock you! Anyhow, I mind it for you. Chiefly because it's a frame-up, and I doubt if you could get a newspaper notice that was not a foregone conclusion.
I'm afraid my way of saying things is a little
more crabbed than usual. I'm working on a new
book4 which is such a pleasure to me, and God and man seem agreed
that I shan't get ahead w[?] with it. Nothing is more disturbing to me than to
work with Houghton Mifflin, and I've got into their net again with this
subscription complete edition. Knopf5
has no subscription department, and he wanted me to do this—said it
had to be. It's given me the Hell of a spring
and summer, and now it's breaking into my winter and my new book. I don't
want anything but quiet and a fairly pleasant
place to write in, and to be let
alone. Do you think I can get it? I'd be glad
to live on a crust if I could get just that. I can't!! Now the Goddam movies
are after "Antonia"6. I'm in terror for fear
Houghton Mifflin may le sell me out; they
can, you know. Isn't it hard luck!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1380.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1380
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- November 8 [1937]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins Papers, 1878-1959 (mssAU 1-5456), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Individual Annotations
See #1377 for Cather's criticism of Akins' poetry and advice to avoid writing for the New York theater based on her own experience of New York-based critics.
Person Annotations
Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.
Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted
verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected,
advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her
hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a
playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to
her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an
adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In
1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and
director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong
correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both
commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.
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
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), by Willa Cather
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
