Samuel Knopf ([April 6, 1923]) | Willa Cather Archive

#2552: Willa Cather to Samuel Knopf, [April 6, 1923]

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NUMBER FIVE BANK STREET³ Ans'd by _____
APR 7-1923
Filed by FK[?] Friday Dear Mr. Knopf¹;

I am so glad to have your letter⁴, which solves all my perplexities. Please have the typewriter sent on to France⁵ as soon as possible, and charge it to my account.

My cabin on the Volendam⁶ is 112. If I am beset by any further difficulties I shall certainly call on you for aid. You seem to be able to give help in almost any direction, from a passport to a typewriter!

Faithfully yours Willa Cather

Will you be kind enough to hand the enclosed⁷ to Mr. Josephy⁸?

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let2552.xml
Letter identifier: 2552
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Samuel Knopf¹
Date letter was written: [April 6, 1923]
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.

On 4 April 1923, Samuel Knopf wrote offering Cather advice about what to do with bonds on shipboard and how to handle her baggage. He also informed her that he had ordered and would ship to her a Number 5 Oliver typewriter.

Cather sailed for France on 14 April 1923 on the Volendam, a Holland-America ocean liner that first went into service November 1922, and returned at the end of November the same year.

Cather originally enclosed #2551 with this letter.

Person Annotations

0128

Knopf, Samuel (1862-1932). Treasurer of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Born in Poland, Samuel Knopf’s family brought him to the U.S. as a child. He headed his own advertising agency until 1921, when his son Alfred’s publishing firm incorporated as Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and he invested in the company and became its treasurer. Active in the company’s affairs, especially management of its London office, he occasionally assumed responsibility for Cather’s affairs in the absence of Alfred and Blanche Knopf, and Cather came to know him personally during her frequent visits to the Knopf offices. When he died, she wrote to his son about the “absolute confidence” he inspired in her (#1672).

0346

Josephy, Robert S. (1903-1993). American book designer. Born on Long Island, Robert Josephy began working for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. at age seventeen in 1920, learning the trade of book design on the job. He was involved in the design of the jacket for Cather’s novel The Professor’s House (1925). In late 1925, he left the firm to begin a long and distinguished career as a freelance book designer. After buying an orchard in Connecticut he became active in environmentalism and liberal politics in the state. The University of Iowa Press published his autobiography Taking Part: A Twentieth Century Life shortly before his death.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

France