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 |
RWG 7800 Pittsburgh Pa.2 Editor1 The Century Magazine4;
In reply to your query about "The Willing Muse"5 I would say that I have always received from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars for my stories, but I have always left the question of compensation entirely to the discretion of the editor. Whatever a story is worth to a magazine is entirely satisfactory to me.
Very Truly yours Willa Sibert Cather. March twenty-fifthInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2453.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2453
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Richard Watson Gilder1
- Date letter was written
- March 25 [1907]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the publication of "The Willing Muse" in the August 1907 issue of Century.
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Berg Collection Cather m.b., New York Public Library, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
1180 Murray Hill Avenue (Pittsburgh, PA): Located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, now part of the Murray Hill Avenue Historic District, 1180 Murray Hill was the home of Judge Samuel A. McClung and his family. Cather lived there at Isabelle McClung’s invitation from 1901 to 1906. She returned there to visit multiple times until 1915, often writing during these visits.
Person Annotations
Gilder, Richard Watson (1844-1909). American editor and poet.
Richard Watson Gilder served briefly in the American Civil War, then
became a journalist as well as a poet, publishing his first volume in 1875.
He was managing editor of Scribner’s Monthly Magazine
when it became the Century Magazine, and then its
chief editor in 1881. He made it one of the most popular and important
magazines in the country. Jeanette Leonard Gilder and Joseph Benson Gilder,
his sister and brother, founded and edited the Critic, a magazine which published some of Cather’s early poetry. The
Century published Cather’s story “The Willing
Muse” in August 1907.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Century Magazine
"The Willing Muse," Century Illustrated Monthly (August 1907) by Willa Cather
