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'm home3 and working hard. My new book4 will be out on December 1st5. The publisher6 is delighted with it7 and thinks it the best thing I have done since "Shadows"8. I will send you one of the first copies off the press.
Lovingly WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1494.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1494
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- [late September 1940]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather was in New York working on Sapphira and the Slave Girl by mid-September 1940. Publication of that book was delayed from 1 to 7 December 1940 on 1 October, indicating this letter was written in late September 1940.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
By 1 October 1940, the publication date of Sapphira and the Slave Girl had been delayed to 7 December 1940, Cather's sixty-seventh birthday.
On 9 September 1940, Alfred and Blanche Knopf telegraphed Cather that they were "unreservedly delighted" with the manuscript of Sapphira and the Slave Girl and sent "congratulations and many many thanks for another quite perfect book."
Person Annotations
Sherwood, Carrie Belle Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader;
Cather's friend. Born in Waukon, IA, to James L. Miner and Julia
Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest of their children. The family
moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the Miner Brothers store became the
largest in town. Cather remembered meeting Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie,
her mother, and siblings were confirmed in the Catholic church. In 1888, she
studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at Notre Dame, IN. She married bank
clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they had two sons. The Sherwoods
travelled often in the West, and visited Europe in 1930. They built a new
house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in 1908; Cather sometimes sent
materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood
led local Red Cross work during the two World Wars, served on the Red Cloud
school board and park commission, and was active in the League of Women
Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace Episcopal Church. Cather
corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout her life and dedicated
My Ántonia to Carrie, model for Frances Harling
in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of Mildred Bennett’s
chief sources for The World of Willa Cather (1951),
and was instrumental in setting up what is now the Willa Cather Foundation
in Red Cloud.
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
Shadows on the Rock (1931), by Willa Cather
