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 |
September?
mailed 9/26/45 F.G. ASTICOU INN3
NORTHEAST HARBOR2
MAINE August 23, 1945 Mr. Ferris Greenslet1 Houghton Mifflin Company 2 Park Street Boston 7, Massachusetts4
Dear Ferris Greenslet:
I do not think there is any objection to the proposition for an Italian translation
of Antonia5, though I rather hate any business proposition6 that comes
through the Viking Publishing House7. In
my bookcase at home I have translations of Death
Comes for the Archbishop8 in nine different languages, and of the nine translations the one in Italian9 is much the best. One might think that the French
translation would be very good, but I had to send back10 to the French
publishers the first translation
because it sounded like a school girl's exercise in French and, above all, because
all the footnotes explaining western terminology
were incorrect and absurd. "Trappers", for instance, in the footnote appeared as
"a religious order." I suppose the eventual French
translation11 is better, but I
have never had the heart to examine it very closely.
An Italian friend read a large part of the Italian translation to me and he approved of it heartily. I myself examined all the foot notes carefully and I should say they were models for lexicographers. I wish I had the Italian translation here or that my secretary12 were not away on her vacation. Perhaps when I go home, lete in September, it will not be too late to give you the name of the woman13 who translated the Archbishop. In case she is still living she would be incapable of doing a slovenly job.
Cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1714.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1714
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- August 23, 1945
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection (MS316), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Greenslet wrote on 13 August 1945 that the Office of War Information had inquired about creating an Italian translation of My Ántonia to sell in Italy.
Greenslet's letter indicated that the Overseas Bureau, a department of the Office of War Information, was headed by Viking president Harold Guinzberg.
See #3060.
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.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Scalero, Alessandra (?-1944). Italian translator. Alessandra Scalero worked as a literary translator from English, German, and French for the publishing houses Mondadori and Il Corbaccio, from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. She translated novels by many prominent authors including Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, John Dos Passos and Daphne Du Mauier and often translated works for Mondadori’s Medusa series. Scalero translated Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop into Italian in 1936, and Cather was impressed with the quality of the work.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
Morte Viene per L'archivescovo, La (1936) by Willa Cather
Mort et L'archevêque, La (1940) by Willa Cather
