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 |
200 GUESTS The Shattuck Inn3
and Annex ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.2 AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR Dear Mr. Simpson1;
This seems to me much better!
Please see that Mr. Lovitt’s4 middle name is spelled correctly in the quotation5 from the New Republic6. I am quite sure that it is MORSE and not MORSS, but you’d better look it up7 to be sure.
The asterisks used to indicate cuts are set too high,—look as if they referred to a footnote. Perhaps you had better use dots instead of asterisks.
I have cut the text a little GS
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
The Shattuck Inn
and Annex
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY,
N.H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR more,
as it now is rather too personal and I've cut out the date at the end.
With many thanks from all the pains you've taken.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2591.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2591
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George M. Stimson1
- Date letter was written
- [October 16 to 18, 1929]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
George Stimson responded to this letter by telegram on October 19, 1929, suggesting Cather's letter was receved in New York on October 19 and was mailed one to three days before this date.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
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).
An excerpt from Robert Morss Lovett's 26 October 1927 New Republic review appeared on the dust jacket of the first edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop with his middle name spelled correctly. It also appeared on the dust jackets of the 1929 illustrated edition of the novel, and Stimson had evidently sent Cather a proof of the jacket. The excerpt reads, "Miss Cather has recaptured for America an aspect of its history, in this story of the Church, venerable and rich in its tradition, becoming primitive amid pioneer conditions. It is not a tragic or pathetic tale, but one full of happiness and triumph; and yet it moves one to tears, by the picture of such goodness and beauty seen through the medium of a faultless art."
On 28 October 1929, Manley Aaron wrote Cather that Robert Morss Lovett was the correct spelling of his name.
Person Annotations
Stimson, George Mirick (1882-1950). Printer employed at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Born in Ponta Delgada in the Azores to an American father and an English mother, by 1916 George Stimson was working as a printer at the Riverside Press of the Houghton Mifflin Co. In the late 1920s, he worked in the production department of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Willa Cather corresponded with him about design and printing issues. By 1942 he had left Knopf for the Macmillan Co.
Lovett, Robert Morss (1870-1956). American writer, editor, educator, and government official. Born in Boston, MA, Robert Lovett graduated from Harvard University in 1892, and after a year teaching at Harvard began a long career teaching English and serving as an administrator at the University of Chicago. With W. V. Moody he wrote The History of English Literature (1902) and The First View of English Literature (1905). He served as editor of the Dial in 1917 and associate editor of the New Republic from 1921 to 1940. At Willa Cather’s suggestion, his October 1927 New Republic review of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) was excerpted on the dust jacket of the 1929 edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop. However, she refused permission to let Lovett use My Ántonia in an edited collection he put together for Houghton Mifflin. He served as government secretary of the U.S. Virgin Islands from 1939 to 1943, but was ousted after the Dies Committee charged him with being a communist subversive. He died in Chicago.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New Republic
