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 |
No, I cannot accept your seductively worded invitation4. I can't, because I have so many things pulling at me all the time that I very seldom get in five or six solid weeks of work. Lectures and conferences I cut out absolutely, because I have not time for them. A woman has to have a fuller personal life than a man — unless she is what is strangely called a "public woman", which I am not.
Nevertheless, I am glad to have this invitation from you, because it gives me an opportunity, at last, to thank you for the book I have always wanted to write myself; your book5 on the few uses and many abuses of the State University. They, (these institutions) really threaten the soundness of our citizenship. It's alarming. Much better that you wrote the book, however, and did not leave it to me. You preserved your poise, and I certainly would have boiled over.
Most cordially yours, Willa Cather Professor Norman Foerster1 The State University of Iowa, School of Letters, Iowa City, Iowa.3 NEW YORK, N. Y. STA. Y 2 FEB 13 1939 12 PM Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1436.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1436
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Norman Foerster1
- Date letter was written
- February 13, 1939
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collected Materials (MS008), University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
It is possible that Foerster was inviting Cather to teach at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Foerster was the Director of Letters at the University of Iowa and was involved in the organization of the workshop in 1939.
Person Annotations
Foerster, Norman (1887-1972). American literary scholar.
Norman Foerster was born in Pittsburgh, PA; he was one of Cather’s
students when she taught English at Central High School in Pittsburgh. He
went on to receive his A.B. from Harvard in 1910 and his MA from the
University of Wisconsin in 1912. He taught English at the universities of
Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa, as well as at Duke University. Foerster
was a part of the neohumanist movement, along with Irving Babbitt and Paul
Elmer More. He wrote often about the role of higher education as well as
about American literature. His book, Toward Standards
(1930) was dedicated to Cather and to Robert Frost. Cather corresponded with
him occasionally about his work.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The American State University: Its Relation to Democracy (1937) by Norman Foerster
