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 |
This, my dear Roscoe, is a postcript to my aunt-responsibiltyship letter about Virginia4. For two years I have wanted to send you a little book, which I want you to read some evening and then return to me by registered post. Several years ago I changed my English publisher5 because all the men whom I knew and liked in the House of Heinemann died one after another, and the remaining partners I did not much like. My new publisher6 began our relations with SHADOWS ON THE ROCK7. He got together all the English reviews, good and bad, pasted them in a little scrap-book and sent them to me. I had never done this myself8 with any bunch of reviews. I think the scrap-book makes quite an interesting picture of "how one stands in England9". Some of the papers quoted are just sporting papers, and some are the best journals in England. Since you are the only member of my family who takes any real interest in my professional life, I thought I would like to have you see this collection of opinions - so generally cordial and friendly.
Castle
Cassell made the same sort of
scrap-book for OBSCURE DESTINIES10, and that
was even more gratifying to me because the sporting papers rather dropped
out and the criticism was of a very sensitive and penetrating kind,.
bBut I
don't want to burden you with too much of this sort of thing all at once. I
think, if you sit down some evening when you are not too tired and read them
all through, skipping, of course, the repititions of the plot, you will get
a genuine satisfaction out of it, as I did.
No word11 from Douglass12 or Elsie13. What's the matter this time? This story14 isn't about Red Cloud15!
Mr. R. C. Cather1, 1225 S. Center Street, Casper,3 Wyoming. GRAND CENT ANNEX N.Y.2 MAR 19 1935 1030 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2115.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2115
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- March 18, 1935
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection (MS316), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
William Heinemann Limited published the English editions of O Pioneers! (1913), My Ántonia (1919), Youth and the Bright Medusa (1921), One of Ours (1923), A Lost Lady (1924), The Professor's House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1928), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Cassell and Company, Limited, published the first British edition of Shadows on the Rock in 1932, as well as the British editions of all subsequent books published in her lifetime.
In a 1921 interview, journalist Eleanor Hinman reports seeing Cather "pasting press clippings on a huge sheet of brown wrapping paper, as whole-heartedly as though it were the most important action of her life." See Bohlke.
Though Knopf did not issue Lucy Gayheart until August 1935, the Woman's Home Companion serialized publication of the novel started with their March 1935 issue, making it possible for Cather's family to read it before this letter was written.
Person Annotations
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Brockway, Virginia Cather (1912-1984) (“West Virginia”). Cather's
niece. Born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe Cather and Meta Schaper
Cather, Virginia graduated from Natrona County High School in Casper, WY, in
1929. She received an A.B. in English from Smith College in Northampton, MA,
in 1933, the same year Willa Cather received an honorary doctorate there. In
1934, she enrolled in the University of Chicago School of Social Services
and was, for a time, a social worker. She married John Hadley Brockway, a
Navy officer, in 1936. They moved frequently until his retirement from the
Navy. She had one child, son George. In letters, Willa Cather sometimes
calls her "West Virginia" to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Virginia
Auld because Virginia Cather's birthplace in Wyoming was farther west than
Mary Virginia's in Nebraska.
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.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
Obscure Destinies (1932) by Willa Cather
Lucy Gayheart (1935) by Willa Cather
