Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
Quebec2 JUL 8 1929
Filed by _____ July
I’ve been playing hookey, though I didn’t mean to when I left New York4. I won’t get to Grand Manan5 until July 12th, so I’m afraid I will be a week late6 with Mr. Stimson7's proofs8. I will start them back to him by the 25th at latest, sooner if possible. I hope it won’t inconvenience him very much. Unless the printers have done very badly by us, there ought not to be many corrections.
It has been cold, cloudy Scotch weather here, very relaxing and restful after New York heat.
Yours W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2487.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2487
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- July 6 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Québec City, Quebec, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Prescott/Knopf Aquisition Uncataloged, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
Individual Annotations
The Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, Canada, a luxury hotel that Cather and Lewis stayed in during their trips to the city in 1928-1930.
A woman (possibly Edith Lewis) stands against a wall with the Château Frontenac in the background. 1928-1930. Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
A new edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop with illustrations by Harold von Schmidt was being readied for printing.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Stimson, George Mirick (1882-1950). Printer employed at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Born in Ponta Delgada in the Azores to an American father and an English mother, by 1916 George Stimson was working as a printer at the Riverside Press of the Houghton Mifflin Co. In the late 1920s, he worked in the production department of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Willa Cather corresponded with him about design and printing issues. By 1942 he had left Knopf for the Macmillan Co.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
