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 |
AUG 23 1933 AM August 19th Dear Alfred1;
Thank you for writing me at once how Pat’s3 operation4 came out. One can’t help being anxious. I wrote him a letter a few days ago, but unfortunately it was sent to the boat by one of the most unreliable island2 boys; if he hasn’t got it by this time, please let me know.
By all means send Dr. Oliver’s5 novel6 along7; if it is addressed to me in handwriting and not on a company label, the postmaster won’t send it to the customs office.
Please reply to the enclosed letter for me. If you are going to bring that8 chapter9 out as a booklet10, I shouldn’t think you would want them to use it. None of these pedagogues are friends of mine.
With love to all of you, and very special love to Pat, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2663.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2663
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- August 19 [1933]
- 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 his son Pat had had an appendectomy on 12 August 1933 and was recuperating well.
On 8 August 1933, Alfred Knopf asked how he could send her Oliver's novel, to be published by Knopf on 25 August 1933, without causing trouble with Canadian customs.
In December 1933, Knopf published 10,000 copies of Chapter 7 of Death Comes for the Archbishop, "The Great Diocese," as December Night.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Knopf, Alfred, Jr. (1918-2009) (“Pat”). Publisher; son of Alfred and
Blanche Knopf. Born in White Plains, NY, “Pat” was the only
child of Alfred and Blanche Knopf. Preoccupied with the publishing business
of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., they left him to be cared for by nannies and sent
him to Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire.
Willa Cather was very fond of him and corresponded with him about his
reading and education. When he failed to gain entrance to Princeton
University, he ran away with only $15 in his pocket, and his parents found
him in Salt Lake City, UT. Alfred Knopf shared this story, otherwise treated
as a deep family secret, with Cather. Pat subsequently enrolled in Union
College in Schenectady, NY. He wrote asking Cather about the structure of
The Professor’s House (1925), and she permitted
Burges Johnson, Pat’s English professor at Union, to publish her remarks as
“When I wrote The Professor’s House” in the College
English Association newsletter (1938). Pat’s studies were interrupted when
he was called up for military service in 1941; he was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross. Awarded his BA in 1943 he joined the family
business, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1946 as company secretary and trade
books manager, subsequently becoming vice president of sales and
establishing the Vintage Books paperback imprint. He cofounded the Atheneum
imprint in 1960 and retired as a senior vice-president of Macmillan in 1988.
Oliver, John Rathbone (1872-1943). American author, priest, professor, and psychiatrist. Born in Albany, NY, John Oliver graduated from Harvard University (1894) and entered the General Theological Seminary, being ordained as an episcopal priest in 1900. He left the priesthood in 1903, perhaps owing to his identity as a gay man. Oliver earned a medical degree from the University of Innsbruck (1910), and served as the Chief Medical Officer for the Supreme Bench of Baltimore and a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital from 1917 to 1930. After earning his PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1927, he returned to the priesthood and taught the history of medicine at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins. Oliver wrote books about psychiatry as well as several novels, including the autobiographical Victor and Victim (1928), which was a contender for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Willa Cather accepted Alfred Knopf’s offer that he send to Grand Manan an Oliver novel he published, Priest or Pagan (1933) (#2663), about a young man torn between virtuous and sinful forces, who ultimately becomes a priest. Oliver died in Waverley, MA. Upon his death, Time magazine referred to him as “one of the most unusual and winning personalities of his time.”
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
Priest or Pagan (1933) by John Rathbone Oliver
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
December Night (1933) by Willa Cather
