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 |
Will you please have a mistake corrected for me on the enclosed pages?
The proof3 of the dedication page4 hasn’t reached me yet!
Please send it to me at Hotel La Fonda5, Santa Fe6. Don’t hold up manufacture on account of it, but please see that it’s sent to me. If there’s anything wrong about it I’ll telegraph you. Otherwise, just glance at it yourself and O.K. it.
Hastily Willa CatherI wish you could get Falls7 to use8 more brilliant colors—that purple is so dark and heavy.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2565.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2565
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Robert S. Josephy1
- Date letter was written
- July 8 [1925]
- Place letter was written
- Taos, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
See #2556
Hotel La Fonda (Santa Fe, NM): Luxury hotel in Santa Fe, NM, which was built in 1922. The hotel was owned by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway and managed by Fred Harvey when Cather and Edith Lewis stayed there in the summers of 1925 and 1926.
The dust jacket of The Professor's House (1925) as published.
Person Annotations
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.
Falls, Charles Buckles (1874-1960). American artist and illustrator. Born in Fort Wayne, IN, in his early twenties Charles Falls worked in Chicago, IL, as an architect’s draftsman, as a sketch artist for the Chicago Tribune, in advertising, and as a free-lance magazine and book illustrator. Around 1900 he moved to New York City and developed the bold, graphic style for which he became known. Falls incorporated woodcuts into his designs and is best known for his World War I propaganda posters and for the ABC Book (1923). At his most popular in the 1920s, his illustrations appeared in Collier’s, Everybody’s, Adventure, and Cosmopolitan, and he also designed book dust jackets. Cather did not like the jacket he designed for The Professor’s House (1925).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
