Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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 |
Please reply to this Professor3 for me. Tell him I am travelling, and that my mail is opened in the office. Let him have4 the story5, and if you charge a reprint fee, please make the figure low.
Faithfully Willa Cather RECEIVEDAUG 14 1933 AM AAK
$10—
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2662.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2662
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- J. Florence Rubin1
- Date letter was written
- [August 7 to 11, 1933]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather was on Grand Manan Island in August 1933, which had mail service to the mainland three times a week, and letters took several days to reach New York, NY, once they were on the mailboat. The conjectured date range takes into account the letter's receipt date of August 13, 1933, and these mailing conditions.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
On 16 August 1933, Alfred Knopf wrote that he would grant Raymond Pence permission to reprint "Double Birthday," as requested, but he saw no reason for a discounted reprint fee since Pence was a prolific anthologist. However, Cather's story did not appear in any of Pence's anthologies.
Person Annotations
Rubin, J. Florence. Staff member, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Cather corresponded with Rubin about permissions issues. Rubin also handled some of the miscellaneous personal tasks that the Knopf office undertook for Cather, such as securing tickets to musical performances.
Pence, Raymond Woodbury (1885-1970). American author, editor, and professor. Raymond Pence earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio State University in his home state before beginning a fifty-one year career in the English department at Depauw University in 1916. Pence wrote several composition textbooks and edited multiple literary anthologies. Willa Cather instructed J. Florence Rubin at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to allow Pence to reprint “Double Birthday” in an anthology (#2662), likely Short Stories of Today (1933), but Alfred Knopf recommended against it, and Pence did not anthologize Cather’s story.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
"Double Birthday," Forum (February 1929) by Willa Cather
