Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 wish to thank you for your friendly letter3, and I am glad that the characters in the book4 seem to you truthfully presented. All of the colored people in the book are people whom I have known at one time or another, in Virginia5 or elsewhere. Some of them are people for whom I had an affection in my childhood.
Very cordially yours, Willa Cather Mr. Langston Hughes,1 Hollow Hills Farm, Monterey,6 California. (Carmel Valley, Jamesburg Route) NEW YORK, N.Y.2 APR 27 1941 8-PM WILLA CATHERInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1535.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1535
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Langston Hughes 1
- Date letter was written
- April 15, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Langston Hughes Papers (YCAL MSS 26), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
On 21 March 1941 Hughes wrote thanking Cather for "the sympathy with which you have treated my people" in Sapphira and the Slave Girl.
Person Annotations
Hughes, Langston (1902-1967). American poet. One of the
leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes wrote about African
American life, traditions, and culture in an innovative style drawing on
jazz. He wrote to Cather after the publication of Sapphira
and the Slave Girl (1940) to thank her for “the sympathy with which
you have treated my people.”
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), by Willa Cather
