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 |
Could you come and have tea with me at four-thirty on Saturday afternoon,
July 13th?
I shall be having my tea in bed, but we can have a pleasant talk. I am just
back from New Hampshire4, and I have
been sick5 most of the time
since April. But though I'm a dull hostess I want to see my Margaret just as soon as I can. If you cannot come, my telephone me. My number is Regent 4–8354.
Remember, half-past four, Saturday the 13th.
Lovingly Your Aunt Willie5703 is at corner of Park & 63d Street
FROM CATHER570 PARK AVE.3, NEW YORK CITY Mrs. Richard Shannon1 131 Riverside Drive New York City2 NEW YORK, N.Y.2 JUL 11 1940 10–PM
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2369.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2369
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Margaret Cather Shannon1
- Date letter was written
- [July 11, 1940]
- 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
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Cather described her spring 1940 illness as a "sore throat" that nearly became "quinsy," or a peritonsillar abscess (#1482). She also referred to the May 1940 illness as a time "when I was very much exhausted" (#1940).
Person Annotations
Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”).
Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born
in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to
Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of
Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on
Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters
to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time.
Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married
Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where
he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to
the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943.
The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne
was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and
Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were
born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a
large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they
donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather
Collection.
Place Annotations
