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 am sending you a request from Dr. Burgess Johnson3. I have obliged him4 personally more than once, and he seems to think I am going to keep it up. I understand from my lawyer5 that no reviewer is permitted to use from a book a passage which relates an entire incident or scene, though he may quote scattered paragraphs as he wishes. The passage6 which Doctor Reynolds7 wishes to use in his "omnibus8" runs about 1050 words and is, indeed, the whole of Chapter XII9.
To use this passage, my lawyer says, Doctor Reynolds should have the permission of the publishers as well as my own. I have simply referred Doctor Johnson to you personally. I think it would be just as well to refuse the request. Of course, there are a great many really good people among the officers and directors of the College English Association. It has become quite a powerful organization in this country and, on the whole, has certainly raised the standard of the teaching of English - which, as you know, was usually the job of men who were unable to teach anything else. On the one hand, I do not want to antagonize the College English people because I am genuinely interested in what they are doing. On the other hand, I am rather nervous about cutting out even so much as a knot-hold in the fence with which we have surrounded Antonia. I notice from the April statement, just received10, that during the last year she has sold 2565 copies, which is certainly pretty good in a war year, for a book that has been out twenty-five years.
Faithfully yours,Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1628.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1628
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- May 3, 1943
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
Cather allowed Johnson to reprint paragraphs from her letter to Pat Knopf about the structure of The Professor's House in the College English Association's News Letter in 1940 (see #1433 and #1490).
Cather's word count points to Chapter XII of Book II ("The Hired Girls"), in which narrator Jim Burden describes the lives of immigrant women in Black Hawk, including Ántonia Shimerda, and especially their disruptive presence at the dancing tent.
On 24 April 1944, Greenslet forwarded Cather's semiannual copyright statement and a check for $5.00, promising the balance due of $1831.00 in September.
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.
Johnson, Burges (1877-1963). American editor and anthologist.
Born in Vermont, Johnson graduated from Amherst College, Amherst,
MA, in 1899 and received an honorary Litt.D. from the college in 1924. After
careers in journalism and publishing in New York City, Vassar College
appointed him professor of English and head of the Publication Bureau in
1915. He held a similar position at Syracuse University from 1927 to 1935
and was chair of the English department at Union College until his 1944
retirement. In addition to many anthologies of humorous verse, Johnson
published books on writing, including Essaying the
Essay (1927), Written Composition in American
Colleges (1936), and The Art of Fiction: A
Formulation of the Fundamental Principles (1939). Pat Knopf, son of
Alfred A. Knopf, attended Union College in the late 1930s, which may have
made Cather willing to respond to Johnson’s queries.
Stern, Benjamin H. (1874-1950) (“B.H.”). American lawyer. Born in New York City to Hyman Stern and Esther Foster Stern, Benjamin Stern graduated from New York University in 1895 and from Columbia Law School in 1898. In 1902 he joined the New York law firm Stern & Reubens. He specialized in copyright law, lecturing on the subject at New York University Law School and serving as the first counsel to the Authors’ League. He advised Willa Cather on copyright matters, as well as advising her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Reynolds, George F. (1877-1964) English professor. Born in Rosendale, WI, he received a PhD from Lawrence College in 1898 and a second PhD from the University of Colorado in 1905. Focusing on Elizabethan literature, he taught for many years at the University of Colorado. Cather declined his request through Burgess Johnson that a chapter of her My Ántonia (1918) be included in the anthology Freedom Speaks: Ideals of Democracy in Poetry and Prose (1943).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Freedom Speaks: Ideals of Democracy in Poetry and Prose (1943) ; edited by George F. Reynolds
