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 |
I have just returned from Maine3 and Miss Bloom4 has brought both your letters to my attention. To your first letter she made the reply which we make to all requests for serial publication. It saves me a great deal of trouble to have all such matters arranged by my publisher5.
Your second letter, of July 2nd, puzzles me. You speak of earlier contributions6 to the Prairie
Schooner7. My dear Miss Schossberger, I
never wrote anything for the Prairie
Schooner. I am quite sure of that. In 1894 and 18958 I was one of the editors
of a college publication called the Hesperian9. The editors of this little magazine were also the
contributors. I remember that several of us were members of a daily theme class
under Herbert Bates10. When the publication
date came near we often filled up the poor
Hesperian11 with our daily themes. It may
be that the editors of the Prairie
Schooner unearthed some of these perfunctory efforts
from the old files of the defunct Hesperian and
reprinted them under our names. I can account in no other way for my having appeared
in the Prairie
Schooner, as you say I did. I do not think I ever saw
a copy of the Prairie Schooner. For ten years after
1912 I was in New York City2 very little and
no periodicals were forwarded to me during that time. I do not know when the Prairie
Schooner
began12
and
or when it ceased to be - if it ceased13 to be. But I am very
positive that I never wrote anything for it.
I would consider it a courtesy and a kindness on your part if you would send me a copy of the material which you contemplate publishing under my name. Naturally, one doesn't like to have one's "daily themes" or one's undergraduate vaporings brought up against one in one's mature years.
Believe me,
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2036.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2036
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Emily Schossberger1
- Date letter was written
- September 10, 1943
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Bernice Slote, English Papers, 1870-1978 (RG/12-10-16), University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Prairie Schooner did not publish any of Cather's work while she was living, but did so several times after her death, beginning with the republication of two early poems in 1948.
The Hesperian was the student literary magazine at the University of Nebraska. Cather served as a Literary Editor in 1892-93, then as Managing Editor in 1893-94.
Cather published several poems, plays, short stories, and editorial comments in the Hesperian between 1891-94, sometimes unsigned.
The Prairie Schooner was founded in 1926.
The Prairie Schooner has not ceased to be, but has continuously published for over 90 years.
Person Annotations
Schossberger, Emily Maria (1905-1979). Austrian writer and editor. Born in Austria, Emily Maria Schossberger served as a full-time correspondent and a member of the Foreign Press Association in Vienna before coming to the U.S. in 1940. She worked as assistant to the director at Fordham University Press for a year before being hired in 1941 as the University Editor and Secretary to the Board of the University of Nebraska publications (the University soon officially chartered its university press). On behalf of the university’s literary magazine, Prairie Schooner, Schossberger corresponded with Willa Cather in 1943 about serial publication of her work and about a piece she believed Cather had written for the Prairie Schooner.
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.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Bates, Herbert (1868-1929). American educator and writer. Born in Massachusetts, Bates received his BA from Harvard (1890), where he contributed to campus publications. In 1891 he came to the University of Nebraska as an instructor in rhetoric; Cather was one of his students, and he inspired the character of Gaston Cleric in My Ántonia (1918). When he left Nebraska in 1896 she applied unsuccessfully for his position. He published a volume of poetry, Songs of Exile (1896), before joining the faculty of the Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, NY, in 1897. He became active in the National Council of Teachers of English, wrote A History of English Literature (1918), and edited Modern Lyric Poetry (1929), and various classics. Cather owned a copy of his edition of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1895) and kept in occasional touch with him until his death.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Prairie Schooner
Hesperian
