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 |
With this letter I am sending Miss Aaron3 two short stories4 for the volume5 of which "Neighbor Rosicky"6 will make a third. I hope that you and Blanche7 will read them both before Miss Aaron starts out to sell them8. "Old Mrs. Harris" is the more interesting, perhaps; but I think "Two Friends" is the best short story I have ever done. It's a little like a picture by Courbet9; has that queer romantic sort of realism. It is so 'American' of thirty years ago that when I look it over I quite forget who wrote it. When you do a thing that is so indigenous that the greatest foreign master couldn't have done it, then, it seems to me, you bring home the bacon, even though it's but a sketch- - a painter's subject done in a painter's way.
"Mrs. Harris", too, is very Western, and it's much more of a story; but it's the two 'business men'10 I'm proud of.
I sent you a wire11 about the jacket for
the fourth edition12. I don't want to play the Atlantic13
article14 too hard, and as the third edition jacket
will be small type and close set, why ns not have the fourth made up
ofshort extracts andwith more space .? I wish you
would send me a proof of that drawing of a
black rock15 you said you might sometime use on a jacket. It rather struck
me at the time, and I'd like to see it again.
I suppose that awful Good Housekeeping16 portrait17 is good publicity18; it's bringing in a flood of letters from the queerest kind of people, splashy ladies on Park Avenue and farmers' wives in Minnesota19, all equally unable to write an English sentence.
Speaking of reviews, the worst I ever got were for "Antonia"20.: I got them from a clipping
bureau in those days , and read them ,.
aAnd
in the whole United States there were just three21 enthusiastic ones22; Fanny Butcher23, Grant
Overton24
in25 the Sun26, and some Philadelphia paper. All the others27 said it wasn't a good story and
it wasn't good English; it was a mass of notes to be read at a Grange meeting and
not a book at all. "A Lost Lady"28 and
"Youth and the Bright Medusa"29 were
the only books that got good reviews. This time12 it's
only the New York30
notices31 that are spiteful ( publicity
apropos of degrees32 and such things
always antagonizes a lot of journalists). The papers in the chain of cities across
the country are all cordial and friendly, even if they don't like this book so well
as others.