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 |
Mr. Sherman4's death was a great shock to everyone, and a great loss to writing people, surely. I wish I could see my way to doing an article for you, but my unfulfilled promises in that line sometimes give me nightmare as it is; I can't add another to the black list of them. If I ever wipe my slate clean of old promises, then I might make some new ones. But writing articles is left-handed work for me, and I'm not likely to do very much of it.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1789.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1789
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irita Bradford Van Doren1
- Date letter was written
- [September 1 to October 20, 1926]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Stuart Sherman's death on August 23, 1926. Cather was in Jaffrey, NH, from September 1 to October 20 that year.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irita Van Doren Papers (MSS43844), Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Person Annotations
Van Doren, Irita Taylor Bradford (1891-1966). American editor. Born in Birmingham, AL, Irita Bradford graduated from the Florida State College for Women in 1908 and attended graduate school at Columbia University. She married Carl Van Doren in 1912; they had three children before divorcing in 1935. From 1919 to 1922 she served on the editorial staff of the Nation, becoming its literary editor in 1923. After Stuart Pratt Sherman, literary editor of the the New York Herald Tribune, died in 1926, Van Doren succeeded him. Willa Cather declined Van Doren’s request to write an article on Sherman.
Sherman, Stuart Pratt (1881-1926). American educator and literary critic. Born in Iowa, Sherman attended Harvard University, then took a position at the University of Illinois in 1907. In 1924 he became editor of the New York Herald-Tribune’s new literary weekly, Books; his assistant there was Irita Van Doren, who succeeded him after his sudden death of a heart attack while swimming. Cather did not think he was a perceptive critic.
Place Annotations
