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 |
W.C. asserts no rights on this matter.
FG January 31, 1947. My dear Mr. Greenslet1:
It is difficult to ask favors from people with whom one has had no former business relations. If there is anything you can do to discourage the project of selling A SONG OF THE LARK3 to a cinema producer4, I implore you to do so. The large money offer you speak of means absolutely nothing to me. My brother, C. D. Cather5, who died suddenly in California6 seven years ago, left me a generous bequest, and I have quite as much money as I can take care of. The amount you mention as my possible share of the sum offered by the cinema producer would simply put me in a much higher income tax bracket, so that I would be very little ahead in any event. I don't want the money and I don't want the worry. And, Heaven knows, I don't want that kind of advertising. I certainly would not be able to outbid the cinema producer to escape cinema production! But if there is any other way of escaping from this threat, please give me a hint. Why, the United States7 if full of writers who are eager to have their books filmed! Couldn't a quiet person be allowed8 to indulge a personal taste?
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1751.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1751
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- January 31, 1947
- 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 January 1947, Greenslet wrote Cather that an "important producer" was interested in making The Song of the Lark into a film. He reminded Cather that her original contract assigned these rights to Houghton Mifflin and suggested a film adaptation would increase sales of the book. He also suggested that her financial share from the film, likely to be $40,000 to $50,000, would be substantial enough to warrant paying extra income tax. He did not mention an agreement Cather had entered into with Houghton Mifflin in 1932, in which she agreed to the sale of the motion picture rights of The Song of the Lark in exchange for their agreeing not to sell the film rights of My Ántonia (see #1100).
On 20 March 1947, Greenslet, explaining that her letter was only recently delivered, agreed that Houghton Mifflin would "for the present at least" not "urge" her to accept a film adaption.
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.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
