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 have had two letters from you within the last eight days. The first3 is important, because it tells me that you have been fishing, and assures me that you have really quite recovered and are yourself again. It was a great disappointment not to see you when I was in Boston4 for several days last summer. I can only hope you had some very good books to read, and enjoyed the feeling of being responsible for nothing. I must confess I rather enjoyed that feeling in the long weeks of August 1942.
Your second letter5, of October 14th, is certainly not pleasant reading, and puzzles me a good deal. As the little boy said, "Why pick on me?" I am not an extravagant consumer of paper. Two old friends in England6 have written me a little about the paper situation there. They are not business people, and sometimes literary people do not write clearly on business matters. However, I gather from their letters that in England the paper consumption is arranged on such a quota as protects the little fellow and trims the brilliant successes down a little on their paper supply. This quota might, for example, trim a hundredth of an inch off7 THE ROBE8, and thereby allow a few more reams to Mr. Julian Huxley9 or Mr. T. S. Eliot10
Within the last week I have dropped in at several book stores and examined some of these books with title pages announcing double publishers. I do not like the look of them. I hate to be disobliging, but I can not sign the form letter you send me without looking into the possible consequences (to me) of such an agreement. My demands on the Houghton Mifflin paper supply have always, I think, been modest.
Cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1643.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1643
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 22, 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
See #1640.
On 14 October 1943, Greenslet wrote Cather that O Pioneers (1913) and My Ántonia (1918) were due for reprinting. However, in 1943 publishers were restricted to using 90 percent of the paper they had used in 1942, and Houghton Mifflin had already used its allotment. As a workaround, publishers were permitted to collaborate with a publisher who still had paper available. He thus asked her permission for the novels to appear under the imprint of The Lexington Press, New York City, and Literary Classics, Inc., New York City, with Houghton Mifflin listed as distributor. He enclosed a form letter (#1642) for her signature.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, Douglas's historical novel about the crucifixion of Jesus was one of the best-selling novels of the 1940s and was nearly 700 pages long.
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.
Huxley, Julian (1887-1975). English biologist, philosopher, and
author. Born in London to Leonard Huxley and Julia Arnold
Huxley, Julian Huxley attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He is known
for his important scientific research on evolution, hormones, and embryology
and for coining the term “evolutionary synthesis.” Huxley developed and
headed the biology department at Rice University in Houston, Texas
(1913-1916) and served in the British Army Intelligence Corps during WWI. In
1919 he married Marie Juliette Baillot and they had two sons, Anthony Julian
and Francis Huxley. Julian Huxley was professor of zoology at King’s
College, London (1925-27), was appointed secretary to the Zoological Society
of London (1935), and served as the director general of UNESCO (1946).
Cather admired Huxley’s work, humorously observing that cutting down Lloyd
C. Douglas’ novel The Robe would allow more paper for
Huxley’s publications (#1643).
Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965) (“T. S.”). British poet.
Born in St. Louis, MO, T. S. Eliot earned a BA from Harvard
University and studied philosophy at Merton College, Oxford. He remained in
England, working as a teacher, a bank clerk, and an editor for the
publishing house Faber & Faber; he became a naturalized citizen in 1927.
Eliot founded the literary journal Criterion in 1922
and edited it until 1939. Known for his “difficult” modernist style, his
best-known poems are “The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock” (1915) and “The
Wasteland” (1921). In 1948 he was awarded the Order of Merit and the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Robe (1943) by Lloyd C. Douglas
