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 |
How pleased I am to hear from you! And I am answering at once because letters pile
up
on me so (especially letters from
soldiers,) that if I do not answer at once I am apt to put it off
for weeks.
Yes, I am just awfully glad to hear from you, and to hear that you keep going. I
sometimes wonder whether it isn't rather a mistake to survive those severe
illnesses. I am amazed at your account of the amount of work you do. I didn't work
at all for a year after my gall bladder
operation3, though even then I had to sturggle with a pretty heavy correspondence. But last summer, up in Maine4, I fell to work and worked very happily.
This winter has been pretty much broken up;- maid for only half a day, cleaning man
sick half of the time and unfit for
work, etc., etc. However, I have done a lot of reading that I have long wanted to
do, and I enjoyed it very much. The lack of good domestic help
is a great drawback to work at a desk and all the hotels are crowded. The food
in all hotels and restaurants here2 is
pretty dreadful. We5 still have plenty of
muis music, but the streets are so crowded
and the crowds so rough that it is very difficult to go to concerts. If any good
books have been written of late (besides
"A Bell for Adano"6 which I think splendid—good
form, good style—style not in the literary sense
but in human sense of very
good
mannrs
manners.) That was a long parenthesis! But if you
know any new books that are boo both elegant and
virile, I wish you'd name them to me. Wars are not conducive to any form of art,
are they?
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1703.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1703
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten and handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Fanny Butcher1
- Date letter was written
- April 19, 1945
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Fanny Butcher Papers, 1830-1984 (Midwest MS Butcher), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
On 24 July 1942 Cather underwent surgery for the removal of her gall bladder and appendix (#2375).
Person Annotations
Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”).
American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia,
KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from
Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In
1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned
her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote
the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning
their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963,
Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming
literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919
until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher
when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of
her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s
knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the
Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir
Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher
paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.
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
A Bell for Adano (1945) by John Hersey
