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 |
Never worry about the turkey. Don't think I could have managed him if he had arrived. We3 have only a part-time cook - not very expert.
But the plant from Thorley's4 was, and is, a great success: a cyclamen, deep rose color, with the beautiful leaves all fresh and strong. I enjoy beautiful plants just as much as I detest ratty ones. This one has given me great pleasure. I would love to write you by hand, but just in the middle of a piece5 of work which I was enjoying very much, my right hand6 went back on me complete and is tied up in a brace7 again. It cannot even get out to wish you a Happy New Year with a pen.
Thinking about years, Old and New, (in a period of enforced inactivity, one does think, you know) it has occurred to me that you have had the things you most wanted out of the years, and that I have got a good deal of what I wanted. Above all, I have pretty well escaped the things I violently did not want, some of which were: too much money, noisy publicity, the bother of meeting lots of people. While I was editor of McClure's8 I had to meet a great many people, both here2 and in England9. I enjoyed it, but after I had enough of it, I wanted to be absolutely free - and I have enjoyed that much more.
Affectionately and with a thousand good wishes, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1687.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1687
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- January 5, 1945
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins papers 1878-1959 (mssZA 1-7330), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Individual Annotations
A Manhattan florist founded by Charles Thorley (who died in 1923).
Cather may have been working on "The Best Years" (published 1948), Hard Punishments (survives only in handwritten fragments), or one of several unpublished stories she left instructions to destroy after her death.
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
Dr. Frank Ober, a specialist from Boston, constructed a brace to immobilize her injured tendon (see #2179)
Person Annotations
Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.
Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted
verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected,
advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her
hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a
playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to
her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an
adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In
1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and
director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong
correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both
commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
