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 |
Name flashes into my mind an hour after leaving you1. "The Story of Two
Noble Lives"3
Edited by
Charles
Augustus
Hare4
Augustus
John
Hare
1834-1903 Author of many
histories and guide books.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1793.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1793
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- [1915 to 1935]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The content of the letter suggests that Cather wrote it after having just seen Akins in person. The incomplete evidence of Cather's correspondence with Akins suggests that Cather saw Akins in person in New York City sporadically during the years 1915 to 1935.
- Place letter was written
- unknown place2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins papers, 1878-1959 (mssZA 1-7330), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
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’.
Hare, Augustus John Cuthbert (1834-1903). British travel writer and biographer. Augustus Hare was born in Rome, Italy, to Anne Frances and Francis George Hare. In 1935 he was adopted by his aunt, Maria Leycester Hare, and he was raised and educated for much of his youth at her home, Buckwell Place. Hare graduated from Oxford in 1857 and subsequently enjoyed a decades-long career as a successful author. He was particularly known for his work as a travel writer—which included guides to cities throughout England, France, Italy, and Spain—and for his biographies, such as Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth (1894) and The Gurneys of Earlham (1895). Cather was aware of Hare’s work and references him as an author of “many histories and guidebooks” in a letter to Zoë Akins.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Story of Two Noble Lives (1893) by Augustus J. C. Hare
