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 returned last week from a long vacation on Mt. Desert3 - - plenty of good scenery but very little good food.
Of course4 it is all right about the Armed Service edition5 of ÁNTONIA6. Several of Knopf's books went into the same edition a year ago. It will be quite satisfactory to me if we divide the $803.38 paid by the Government for the Armed Service edition into two equal parts.
The postscript of your letter7, however, is very perplexing. Before I left Maine8 I had a confidential letter from an old and loyal friend who had just returned from an extensive tour in South America9 and Central America. He is not, and never has been, connected with any publishing house. He is a linguist and scholar. Collectors often consult him for his expert knowledge of rare editions, etc.
He wrote to urge me to make no definite commitment (for the present) as to the
projected twenty-five cent reprint "Pocket Edition". He has been informed that a
translation of six or more of my books is being made in Spain10,;
and even in South America that translation would
probably have the greater prestige. I have thought the matter over, and at this time
I am unwilling to grant the option you ask. When I learn something more about the
progress of the Spanish translation, and about the twenty-five cent American-Spanish
edition (put out by a combination of several New
York2 publishing firms), I may change my mind. At present I can see
only a proposition to sell forty thousand books for four hundred dollars, of which
sum I would receive two hundred dollars. I cannot see that it would be good business
for either you or me.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1675.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1675
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 13, 1944
- 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
On 3 October 1944, Greenslet reported that Houghton Mifflin had just received a check for $803.38, royalties for 80,338 copies of an Armed Services Edition of My Ántonia. He apologized for the fact that Cather may not have been consulted about the edition and proposed a 50/50 split of royalties between author and publisher.
The Council on Books in Wartime sponsored the Armed Services Editions to boost morale among the troops during World War II. The volumes were small paperback volumes, 5 by 3 inches, printed on lightweight paper. Death Comes for the Archbishop appeared in 1943 as No. D-97 in the special D-Day series, which were held back from distribution on the orders of General Eisenhower. O Pioneers! and My Ántonia were also published as Armed Services Editions.
In Greenslet's 4 October 1944 postscript, he reports a request for "an option on Spanish and Portuguese rights of MY ANTONIA, for sale in all Latin-American countries," with guaranteed royalties of $250 for Spanish rights and $150 for Portuguese rights on an edition of 40,000 to be sold for 25 cents.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
