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 |
Certainly, you may quote3
anything you wish4 from "Not Under Forty"5 and anything you select6 from my letter7 to "Pat"
Knopf8, provided you don't select a statement that is too informal or
rather exaggerated. I don't remember now just how informal my letter was, but I
remember that I gave him my real reasons for writing "The
Professor's House"9 in the form I did. I thought the unusual structure10 was sufficiently bound
together by the fact that the pProfessor's life with Tom Outland was just as real and
vivid to him as his life with his family, and because Tom Outland was in the pProfessor's
house so much during his student life,.
hHe and the
atmosphere he brought with him became really a part of the house - that is, of the
old house which the pProfessor could not altogether leave. If I had happened to write the book in a very
modernistic manner, letting everybody's thoughts and memories and shades of feeling
tumble into the book helter-skelter, I could have made a rather exciting color
study. But the trouble is, these stunts,
while they are very exciting, seem to leave nothing behind - no after taste for the
writer. They go up, and out, like rockets.
May I say, Mr. Johnson, that I am very happy that "Pat" is so interested in his work under you? I think it is a genuine interest. There is good material in "Pat", but he has been under very poor teachers and had the misfortune in early boyhood to be thrown among a lot of very showy and rather clever people. That is the almost inevitable fate of the only son of a publisher11 in this particular time. A great many very cheap people come and ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ go in a publisher's office these day, and young lads cannot very well judge which are the wise ones and which are the wisecrackers.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1433.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1433
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Burges Johnson 1
- Date letter was written
- January 12, 1939
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Burges Johnson Family Papers, 1895-1963 (MA.00318), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, MA
Individual Annotations
Johnson quoted from "The Novel Démeublé" in the section on "Setting."
Johnson quoted Cather's letter on The Professor's House in the section on "The Novel, The Novelette, and The Short Story."
See #3348 for a slightly later and longer excerpted published version of this letter to Pat Knof, the original of which has not been located.
"Tom Outland's Story" is Book II of The Professor's House (1925), narrated by Tom in the first person, while "The Family" (Book I) and "The Professor" (Book III) are presented primarily through the consciousness of Professor Godfrey St. Peter at a time after Tom's death.
Person Annotations
Johnson, Burges (1877-1963). American editor and anthologist.
Born in Vermont, Johnson graduated from Amherst College, Amherst,
MA, in 1899 and received an honorary Litt.D. from the college in 1924. After
careers in journalism and publishing in New York City, Vassar College
appointed him professor of English and head of the Publication Bureau in
1915. He held a similar position at Syracuse University from 1927 to 1935
and was chair of the English department at Union College until his 1944
retirement. In addition to many anthologies of humorous verse, Johnson
published books on writing, including Essaying the
Essay (1927), Written Composition in American
Colleges (1936), and The Art of Fiction: A
Formulation of the Fundamental Principles (1939). Pat Knopf, son of
Alfred A. Knopf, attended Union College in the late 1930s, which may have
made Cather willing to respond to Johnson’s queries.
Knopf, Alfred, Jr. (1918-2009) (“Pat”). Publisher; son of Alfred and
Blanche Knopf. Born in White Plains, NY, “Pat” was the only
child of Alfred and Blanche Knopf. Preoccupied with the publishing business
of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., they left him to be cared for by nannies and sent
him to Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire.
Willa Cather was very fond of him and corresponded with him about his
reading and education. When he failed to gain entrance to Princeton
University, he ran away with only $15 in his pocket, and his parents found
him in Salt Lake City, UT. Alfred Knopf shared this story, otherwise treated
as a deep family secret, with Cather. Pat subsequently enrolled in Union
College in Schenectady, NY. He wrote asking Cather about the structure of
The Professor’s House (1925), and she permitted
Burges Johnson, Pat’s English professor at Union, to publish her remarks as
“When I wrote The Professor’s House” in the College
English Association newsletter (1938). Pat’s studies were interrupted when
he was called up for military service in 1941; he was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross. Awarded his BA in 1943 he joined the family
business, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1946 as company secretary and trade
books manager, subsequently becoming vice president of sales and
establishing the Vintage Books paperback imprint. He cofounded the Atheneum
imprint in 1960 and retired as a senior vice-president of Macmillan in 1988.
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.
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Art of Fiction: A Formulation of its Fundamental Principles (1939), by Clayton Hamilton, Burges Johnson, Booth Tarkington and Brander Matthews
Not Under Forty (1936), by Willa Cather
The Professor's House (1925), by Willa Cather
