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 was glad to receive a line3 from you concerning royalties. It tells me, at least, that you are well and back in town4 again. I have only very lately returned from a long and rather exhausting summer. The six weeks in San Francisco5, with the brother 6who has been so ill, were unforgettably happy ones. During that time I was able to take Dr. Ober's7 wonderful brace off my right hand8, and my brother's condition, also, improved greatly. Having had a heart lesion he will never be his old self physically, but he takes a slower tempo very gracefully. We have not had such a long, deep visit together for years. The rest of the summer I spent in Victoria, British Columbia,9 Lake Louise,10 and Montreal.11 Everything out there is interesting, and so big, so big! But I still prefer the Eastern Coast of Canada12, and the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherP.S. By the way, please ask your secretary13 to mail a copy of the last edition of ANTONIA 14to me.
570 Park 190.70no slip
enclosed
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1551.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1551
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 20, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MS AM 1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 6 October 1941, Greenslet sent Cather her annual royalty statement covering sales through September and promised a check for $451.83 would be sent on 1 December.
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Ober, Frank (1881-1960). Boston Orthopedic surgeon. Born in Mt. Desert, ME, Ober graduated from Tufts Medical School in Boston, MA, in 1905. He volunteered for service overseas in 1917 and spent two years as head of the orthopedic section of the U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in France. On his return he rose from junior member of the visiting staff to chief orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Boston and served as a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. About once a month he traveled to Philadelphia, PA, and New York City to see patients in consultation. In 1941, Cather was referred to Ober for her troubles with her right hand, and he prescribed and had constructed for her a metal and leather splint for her forearm and hand.
Leighton, Elizabeth C. (1917-after 1978) (“Betty”). Secretary to Ferris Greenslet. Born in Massachusetts, daughter of Orlando S. Leighton and Amy C. Leighton, Elizabeth Leighton was working as a secretary at a publishing house in Boston by 1940. She corresponded with Willa Cather on Ferris Greenslet’s behalf in the 1940s.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
