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 |
When I feel that the time has come for depositing Miss Jewett3's letters anywhere, I shall certainly consider your friendly offer of hospitality.
The inconsistency, to which, in your letter, you call my attention, can be easily explained. A letter written by Gustave Flaubert4 to George Sand5 would have little value for me because it would be merely a collector's item, and I am not a collector. I have the real Flaubert in his books. I scarcely need his handwriting. Miss Jewett's letters, written to me, are the very personal letters of a dear friend and have a great value for me. The only letters which I thought had any special interest for the public, I allowed Mrs. James T. Fields6 to use in her volume7 of Miss Jewett's letters, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1911. I allowed her to use these letters because she convinced me that they offered very good advice to all young writers.
Very cordially yours, Willa Cather Mr. Carl J. Weber1, Colby College, Waterville8, Maine. NEW YORK, N.Y.2 Nov 15 1941 [missing] PM WILLA CATHERInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1556.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1556
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carl J. Weber 1
- Date letter was written
- November 17, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , Colby College, Miller Library, Waterville, ME
Person Annotations
Weber, Carl Jefferson (1894-1966). American academic. Born in
Baltimore, MD, Carl Weber received a BA (1914) from the Johns Hopkins
University and a BA (1916) and MA (1920) from Oxford University, where he
was a Rhodes Scholar. He joined the English Department of Colby College in
Waterville, ME, in 1919, and remained until his retirement. Weber helped the
Colby Library to develop notable special collections focusing on Thomas
Hardy, Edward Arlington Robinson, Jacob Abbott, and Sarah Orne Jewett, and
he founded the Colby Library Quarterly in 1943. In
1941 he wrote Cather suggesting she might deposit Jewett’s letters at the
Colby Library; although Cather did not reject his proposal outright, she did
not send the letters to Colby and their whereabouts are unknown. Cather also
corresponded with him in 1944 about her 1902 visit to A. E. Housman.
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). American short story writer and
novelist. Born in South Berwick, ME, Jewett began sharing homes
in Boston (at 148 Charles Street) and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA, with Annie
Adams Fields in 1881, while continuing to live in her family home in South
Berwick with her mother and sister part of the year. She was associated
throughout her career with the Atlantic Monthly, and
her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs,
was serialized there in 1896. Like much of her fiction, it focused on rural
and small town New England life. By the time Cather met Jewett at 148
Charles Street in 1908, Jewett had largely ceased writing because of a
spinal concussion she suffered in a 1902 carriage accident. She wrote
important letters of advice to Cather in 1908, criticizing her decision to
write "The Gull's Road" (1908) from the perspective of a male character,
which she called "something of a masquerade" (27 Nov. 1908), and urging her
to give up her editorial work at McClure's Magazine
so she could focus full-time on fiction writing (13 Dec. 1908). After
Jewett's death in South Berwick in 1909, Cather often referred to her and
her advice about writing. Cather edited The Best Stories
of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) for publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in
her preface classed The Country of the Pointed Firs
with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as one of "three
American books which have the possibility of a long, long life."
Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880). French novelist. Born in
Rouen, France, son and grandson of physicians and surgeons, Gustave Flaubert
began writing at an early age. He traveled extensively in Europe and the
Middle East but lived primarily in Rouen with his mother and orphaned niece,
Caroline Flaubert. Flaubert was devoted to his craft, taking five years to
write Madame Bovary (1856) and seven to write L’Education sentimentale (1869). His precision in
observation as well as in style established modern literary realism. Even
his historical novels, such as Salammbó (1864), set
in ancient Carthage, reflect his meticulous attention to every detail. Willa
Cather read Flaubert’s works from her youth.
Dupin, Amantine Lucile Aurore (1804-1876) (“George Sand”). French
novelist. Born in Paris, Aurore, as she was known, grew up on
her grandmother’s estate in Nohant, Berry, France. In 1822 she married
Casimir Dudevant; they had two children before she left him in 1831,
obtaining a legal separation in 1835. She began a series of affairs, first
with Jules Sandeau, from whom she took her pen name, George Sand; her most
notable affair was with composer Frédéric Chopin (1837-1847). Her novel, Indiana (1832), made her famous, and was followed by
many more, some more or less autobiographical, as well as various memoirs.
Cather read Sand as a young woman and kept an engraving of Sand in her
apartment in later years.
Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social
reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields,
partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before
and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important
American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in
Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were
published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148
Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in
1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay
reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of
selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay,
retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under
Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which
included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would
become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), by Annie Fields
