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 |
Dear Miss Kirchwey:
Miss Cather has been in the South since the first of April. She went away to recover from an attack of bronchitis, and I have not been forwarding any letters to her. I expect her to return by the 15th of May, and will bring your letter4 at once to her attention.
Very truly yours, Sarah J. Bloom5 Secretary to Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2469.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2469
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Freda Kirchwey1
- Date letter was written
- April 28, 1938
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Nation (New York, N.Y.: 1865). Nation Records, 1879-1974 (MSAm2302), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
See #2470 for the subject of Kirchwey's letter.
Person Annotations
Kirchwey, Freda (1893-1976). American journalist, editor, and
publisher. Born in Lake Placid, NY, to George Kirchwey, a law
professor, and Dora Wendell Kirchwey, a high school English teacher, Freda
Kirchwey attended the Horace Mann School and Barnard College. An advocate
for women’s suffrage, she retained her surname when she married Evans Clark
in 1915 and was a member of the radical New York Women’s Peace Party during
World War I. She held several journalistic positions, including as editorial
assistant at Every Week under Edith Lewis as managing
editor in the magazine’s final months in 1918, before joining the staff of
the Nation in August 1918. In 1922 she became
managing editor and may have commissioned Cather to write “Nebraska: The End
of the First Cycle” (1923) for the magazine’s “Portraits of the States”
series. Kirchwey became executive editor of the Nation’s board of editors in 1933 and by 1937 was owner, editor,
and publisher. In the late 1930s the Nation was one
of the few American magazines to report the atrocities committed against the
Jews in Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, and Kirchwey moved
the magazine away from its earlier pacifist stance to advocate for war. In
declining Kirchwey’s 1938 invitation to contribute to the Nation’s “Living Philosophies” series, Cather praised her
political courage.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Nation
