Allan Nevins (September 26 [1942]) | Willa Cather Archive

#1592: Willa Cather to Allan Nevins, September 26 [1942]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ 570 Park Avenue³ September 26 Dear Allan Nevins¹;

Two weeks ago your letter reached me—when you wrote, on July 31^st, I was in the Presbyterian Hospital having my gall bladder⁴ taken out. In this dreary period of convalescence letters like yours are especially welcome. Naturally I am pleased to have the good opinion of the Auvergnat priest, but I am much more pleased that you should have taken the time and trouble to write me about it. I think an impulse of real friendliness must have prompted your letter, and I like to think so.

Cordially yours Willa Cather Allan Nevins¹ Department of History Columbia University Morningside Heights New York City² NEW YORK N.Y.² SEP 26 1942 5-PM If not delivered return to W. S. Cather 570 Park Ave. New York.²

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1592.xml
Letter identifier: 1592
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Incldues one envelope, handwritten on recto and verso.
Person to whom letter was written: Allan Nevins¹
Date letter was written: September 26 [1942]
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Allan Nevins Papers, 1912-1992, Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY

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.

Cather had surgery to remove her gall bladder and appendix on 24 July 1942, and it took her several months to recover.

Person Annotations

1263

Nevins, Allan (1890-1971). American journalist and historian. Born in Camp Point, IL, Allan Nevins graduated from the University of Illinois and first worked as an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post. Between 1924 and 1926 he served as literary editor of the New York Sun and after a term teaching history at Cornell University became literary editor for the New York World. Nevins taught history at Columbia University for 30 years, while continuing to work for the World until 1931. He also wrote two Pulitzer Prize-winning historical biographies: Grover Cleveland (1932) and Hamilton Fish (1936). Cather recalled reading Nevins's Frémont, the West’s Greatest Adventurer (1928) with “especial pleasure” (#1226). In 1939 Nevins founded the Society of American Historians, which Cather declined an invitation to join (#1443). Nevins also first alerted Cather of an “enterprise” to “popularize a number of American books in cheap editions among English readers”; in 1943 Heinemann, in collaboration with the Readers Union, produced a wartime edition of My Ántonia (1918) (#2752).

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States