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 |
Won't you ask the Mercury people3 please, please not to bother the Shattuck Inn4 any more?
I'm told the English reviews5 of the Archbishop6 are quite unusual. If any have come in will you send them to me here2? If none have come, perhaps in the next letter to Heinemann7 you can ask him to send them. I used to get all English reviews through an English Clipping agency8, but since I’ve had no address9 all second class matter has gone astray in the post.
Sincerely Willa Cather 2 3891 7/8 75.4
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2572.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2572
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- M. Manley Aaron1
- Date letter was written
- [January 14 to 17, 1928]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date range reflects the fact that Cather was writing from Red Cloud, NE, and Manley Aaron replied on January 19, 1928.
- 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
On 19 January 1928, Aaron apologized that the Mercury mail forwarding service was sending her mail to the Shattuck Inn in New Hampshire and promised to take care of Cather's mail forwarding personally.
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Outlook, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, and Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art all reviewed Death Comes for the Archbishop.
On at least one occasion, Cather used the services of the International Press-Cutting Bureau, a London-based press-cutting business founded in 1920 by Joshua Podro. See #0712 for more information.
Cather and Lewis were forced to vacate their apartment on 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village in the fall of 1927 because of subway construction.
Person Annotations
Aaron, M. Manley. Alfred Knopf’s secretary. As secretary to the president of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Willa Cather’s publisher, Manley Aaron was responsible for clerical matters, such as tracking Cather’s address as she traveled or mailing her supplies. However, Alfred Knopf also delegated to Aaron the task of negotiating with magazines for the publication of Cather’s short stories collected in Obscure Destinies (1932), and she took direct responsibility for other matters for Cather and other authors as well.
Heinemann, William (1863-1920). British publisher. Born in
Surrey, England, the son of a German banker and an English mother, Heinemann
aspired to a musical career. Instead he joined the music-publishing firm of
Nicolas Trübner. He founded his own company in 1896; one of the first books
published was Hall Caine’s best-seller, The Bondman
(1896). Heinemann also published Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson,
and Joseph Conrad, as well as translations and educational books. After
William Heinemann died, Frank Doubleday bought a majority interest. Cather
apparently met Heinemann through her work for McClure’s
Magazine, and until 1931 Heinemann’s company published most of her
books although he declined The Song of the Lark
(1915).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
