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 |
and Annex ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN JAFFREY, N.H.2 November 15th Dear Mrs. Vanamee1;
I deeply regret that I was beyond the reach of telephone when your telegram reached Miss Bloom3. At this country hotel4 repairs have not been made since the devastating flood and hurricane of September 21st.
I am most appreciative of the honor5 the
Academy has conferred upon me and hope to be able to meet some of the members when
I
return AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL OF THE
YEAR
The Shattuck Inn
and Annex
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H. to town. I shall go down to
New York6 on the sixteenth of December,
and if there should be any meetings of the
Academy7 after that date, I shall be obliged if you will let me know.
My safest address is still c/o Alfred A. Knopf8, as I do not know at which hotel I shall stop9 for the rest of the Winter.
Very sincerely yours Willa Cather AMERICAN PLANOPEN ALL OF THE YEAR
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1424.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1424
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto only of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Grace Davis Vanamee 1
- Date letter was written
- November 15 [1938]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Vanamee's response dated November 16, 1938.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather, Willa (1873-1947), Member Archives, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Cather had been elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1929. Here she is responding to her elevation to the more exclusive American Academy of Arts and Letters, made up of Institute members.
On 18 November 1938, Vanamee informed Cather that there would be no additional Academy meetings in 1938.
In #1361 she told Vanamee to remove her 570 Park Avenue address from the National Institute of Arts and Letters yearbook on the pretense that she was giving up her lease.
Person Annotations
Vanamee, Grace Delle Davis (1876-1946). Assistant to the president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in North Adams, MA, daughter of George and Electra Magoon Davis, Grace Davis attended the Emerson College of Oratory in Boston from 1899 to 1900. She published occasional verse, taught, and lectured in schools until her marriage to lawyer William Vanamee in 1909. After his death, she joined the staff of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1915, becoming assistant to the president from 1921 to 1941; she corresponded with Cather and many other writers on Academy business. In the 1920s Grace Vanamee was active in Republican politics in New York, once running on a ticket headed by Fiorello LaGuardia. She retired to Florida, where she died.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
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
