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 |
D R A F T May 1946 Dear Professor Hornberger1:
I sincerely regret that I can not reconsider, and that my decision to keep Death Comes for the Archbishop3 out of anthologies and textbooks will remain unchanged for the future. I object to anthologies not only as a very cheap form of publishing, but as a superficial method educationally. During the last twelve years I have talked with so many young graduates from our colleges, and I have come to doubt the wisdom of encouraging students to read contemporary writers. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that during the few years a young man spends in college, he should have an opportunity to seriously consider the so-called "classics" of English literature. If he is a lively boy, he will read contemporary books for amusement - - - because he hears them talked about.
There was nothing remarkable about such a list, certainly. But I still hear from some of the interested boys and girls who read those old-fashioned books with me. I wonder wether you would be brave enough to put Silas Marner in your anthology. I still think it a rather relaxing book; slow in tempo, rich in detail, good for young people in a hurried, feverish age.
I had no choice in the above list. I have no idea who chose the required reading for the second year. The books were handed out to me as the months went round and I was asked to read them with the students, and to examine the boys and girls on this list at the end of the term or at the end of the year. I do not think a high school course in English can do more than this. If a hundred boys and girls are exposed to the influence of a great writer, or even a very accomplished writer, probably two out of the hundred will get something, something which will always be precious to him. The other ninety-eight will certainly not be hurt by anything in such a course. At worst, he can only be bored. In such a course there was no press agent, no writer was 'sold', in the business man's sense, to the young and guileless.
Every anthology that I have seen is a form of salesmanship, and not one absolutely honest except Field-Marshal Wavell's14. Sometimes his15 comment is even better than the subject of his comments. Cut out the heavy overweight of Browning16, and I certainly would not quarrel with him anywhere. He thinks The Hound of Heaven17 is the "greatest of all lyrics", and he says so. He wasn't afraid of Rommel18, and he isn't afraid of scholarship.
P.S. If you would send me a list of the writers included in your Volume I19, it would assist me in considering the second one.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1939.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1939
- Contents
- This document may be a transcription created after Cather's death to guide the management of her literary property. The handwritten note is by Edith Lewis, Cather's first executor. Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Theodore Hornberger1
- Date letter was written
- May 1946
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Explanation of conjectured place letter was written
-
Other letters written during the same period indicate Cather was in New York, NY, in May 1946.
- Location of original letter
- Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska in June 1895.
Cather began teaching at Central High School in Pittsburgh, PA, in the spring of 1901. She remained at Central High until taking a position in the fall of 1903 at Allegheny High School in Allegheny, PA (which became part of Pittsburgh in 1907). She taught at Allegheny High until the spring of 1906.
Person Annotations
Hornberger, Theodore (1906-1975). American educator. Born in
Michigan, Hornberger earned a BS (1927), MA (1929), and PhD (1934) in
English, all from the University of Michigan. A specialist in early American
literature, he taught at Michigan until 1937, and then the University of
Texas (1937-46), the University of Minnesota (1946-1960), and the University
of Pennsylvania (1960-1974). Hornberger was co-editor of The Literature of the United States: An Anthology and a History
(1946, 1947). Cather rejected his request to use Death
Comes for the Archbishop in the second volume.
Burns, Robert (1759-1796). English poet. Born in Alloway, Scotland to William and Agnes Brown Burns, Robert Burns wrote poetry inspired by Scottish culture and his life as a tenant farmer. Known as the “national poet of Scotland,” his best known poem is the mock-heroic “Tam o’ Shanter.” Burns also contributed to The Scots Musical Museum (1787) and the Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs (1801-1802), which was published after his death. Willa Cather taught Burns’s poetry while working at Central High School in Pittsburgh.
Wavell, Archibald Percival (1883-1950). British army officer and
Viceroy of India. Wavell made his career in the Boer War and
World War I (where he served in France and lost an eye at Ypres in 1915) and
in Palestine under General Allenby. In World War II he first served as
General Officer Commanding in Chief of the British Middle East Command until
1941, when he became Commander-in-Chief in India, where he had spent his
early childhood. He was made viceroy and governor-general in 1943. One of
his first actions was to use the army to distribute supplies during the
Bengal Famine of 1943, which Cather notes in letter #1757. Until his
resignation in 1947 his main concern was the preparation of India for
self-rule. Cather was a great fan of his popular poetry anthology Other Men’s Flowers (1944), which consisted of poems
he knew by heart.
Browning, Robert (1812-1889). British poet. Born in London
and educated at home, Browning’s early poetry won praise from critics, but
his Sordello (1840) was condemned for its
obscurantism. Widespread fame and popularity did not come to him until the
publication of The Ring and the Book (1868-69), and
earlier poems such as “My Last Duchess” gained new appreciation. In 1845
Browning sought an introduction to Elizabeth Barrett, a better-known poet
than he was at the time; she and Browning married in 1846 and went to Italy
to live. Cather studied Browning’s work while at the University of Nebraska,
and referred to it often in her early journalism, but she disliked the
Browning Societies, which were formed to study his works. One of her early
stories, “‘A Death in the Desert,’” borrowed the title of one of Browning’s
poems.
Rommel, Erwin (1891-1944). German military leader. Known as
the "Desert Fox," Rommel was the commander of the German and Italian
campaign in Northern Africa (1940-1943), where he faced Allied forces led by
General Archibald Wavell. Allied forces under General Bernard Montgomery
forced Rommel and the Germans out of Egypt at the second battle of El
Alamein in late October 1942.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
Silas Marner (1861), by George Eliot
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Lyrical Ballads (1798), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Marmion (1808), by Walter, Sir Scott
Quentin Durward (1823), by Sir Walter Scott
The Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin
The Tragedy of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
Other Men's Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry (1945), by Archibald Wavell
The Hound of Heaven (1900), by Francis Thompson
The Literature of the United States: An Anthology and a History (1946), by Walter Blair, Theodore Hornberger and Randall Stewart
