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 |
YOLA SWARTZ, LIBRARIAN Members of Board:
Mrs. Dora Kaley
Miss Ella Stonebreak
Mrs. Mary McCall
E. J. Overing, Jr.
P. M. Whitehead
Roy Sattley C. F. CATHER, President
F. G. TURNURE, Vice President
HOWARD S. FOE, Secretary Red Cloud Nebraska,2 3 RECEIVED BY _____
REFERRED TO _____
OCT 27 1921
ANSWERED BY k 10/27 October 24 Dear Mr. Knopf1;
I am so glad to have your letter from Chicago3 and I beg you to get at4 Mr. Lorrimer5 as soon and as vigorously as you can. I have been laid up with a bad attack of neuritis and will have all I can do to full my engagement to speak6 at Omaha7 on the 29th of this month, next Saturday.
Do you know that your publicity department utterly failed to help me out on the Omaha
engagement? No plates or photographs8
from your office were ever received by the Fine Arts Committee. Yesterday photographs9 appeared in all the Omaha
Sunday papers, but they were some my mother took out of frames and sent up in
response to last despairing telephone callsf from
the Omaha women. Today10 two plates
arrived here, when i it is quite too late to used them, and of course they should have been sent to Omaha, not to me. Seeing
that your publicity people had two months warning, I think their results are
discouraging, don't you11?
I expect to get to New York12 about the eigth of the month. I hope there will be some copies of the "Bright Medusa"13 on sale in Omaha this week. H. and M.14 have written me that there will be a display of their books there. I have been in bed for a week and am behind in everything.
Hastily yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2520.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2520
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only with typewritten letter responding to Cather on verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- October 24 [1921]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Alfred and Blanche Knopf were trying to place One of Ours serially in a magazine. Alfred Knopf later wrote in his unpublished memoir that Lorimer refused it for the Saturday Evening Post.
The Omaha Society of Fine Arts had invited Cather to speak on 29 October 1921.
See #2516
On 23 October 1921, both the Omaha Bee and the Omaha World Herald ran articles promoting Cather's upcoming lecture at the Fontenelle Hotel.
On 10 October 1921, a secretary to Alfred Knopf wrote Cather apologizing for an earlier failure to send the photographs and enclosed in her letter (addressed to Cather in Red Cloud) glossy prints of the E.A. Hoppe photograph of Cather (see #2517).
On 27 October 1921, Knopf apologized profusely and begged Cather not to be too hard on his office staff, who did not routinely make such mistakes.
Houghton Mifflin
Person Annotations
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Lorimer, George Horace (1867-1937). American journalist, author, and publisher. Lorimer is best known for his work as editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post from 1899-1936. He also served as an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company, which published the Post and the Ladies Home Journal. When the latter magazine purchased the serial rights for Cather's story "Old Mrs. Harris," he was vice president of Curtis.The story was published under the title "Three Women" in September, October, and November 1932. Lorimer’s own works include Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son (1901).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) by Willa Cather
