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 |
REFERRED BY
NOV 18 1921ANSWERED BY
FILED BY Thursday Dear Mr. Knopf1:
The proofs4 have at last arrived from the West. Thanks for the English edition5 of "The Bright Medusa"6. It's not half so pretty as the book you made. I send back the cutting7 from the Saturday Review8, which I like9 very much.
I am gradually getting caught up with the novel, and you'll hear from me soon.
Hastily W. S. C CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2521.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2521
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [November 17, 1921]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
November 17, 1921, is the Thursday before November 18, 1921, when this letter was stamped as received.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
William Heinemann Ltd. of London published Youth and the Bright Medusa in August 1921.
The anonymous British reviewer praised Cather as "an author who knows, loves, and respects her craft." The reviewer found fault with "Coming, Aphrodite!" but praised Cather's "keen appreciation of the characters of her world--largely the world of the artist and dilettante--a deep knowledge of the human heart, and a delicate sense of beauty."
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) by Willa Cather
"Fiction: Youth and the Bright Medusa," Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art (October 29, 1921)
Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art
