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 |
Perhaps I should bring this to your attention, as this request3 may have been refused in the regular routine.
Is there anything in it? Is the "Oxford Press" the same as the Oxford University Press? Would anybody be benefitted by such an anthology4 except the compilers thereof?
Of course this sort of anthology5, if it were well done, would really be very interesting and well worth our making an exception to a good rule. But Benét6?- - - Hasn't he too many axes to grind for his friends to make a really sound anthology?
You know these publishers and these two editors7, and I do not, so I leave it entirely to your judgement. I
think the book he mentions suggests using, "Missionary Journeys"8, well chosen for an
anthology.
For the last month we9 have had unprecented heat here2, but now the wind blows from the North once more. I shall be in New York10 about September 30th and will call the office by telephone when I arrive. I hope you and Pat11 are being good housekeepers.
Affectionately to you both W. S. C. RECEIVEDSEP—81937
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2695.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2695
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- September 5 [1937]
- 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
Norman Holmes Pearson's initial request for permission to publish "Missionary Journeys," a part of Death Comes for the Archbishop, was denied by Knopf's office. Pearson then wrote Cather directly, and she eventually granted permission for use of the selection in the Oxford Anthology of American Literature.
Norman Holmes Pearson wrote Cather that his job is "to survey American literature from the beginning of the seventeenth century and to present what is . . . the best prose and poetry which Americans have produced."
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.
Benét, William Rose (1886-1950). American poet, critic, and editor. Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in Bethlehem, PA, Benét graduated from Yale University in 1907. He was an editor of the New York Evening Post Literary Review (where he favorably reviewed the 1923 edition of Cather's April Twilights) and helped found and edit the Saturday Review of Literature. The author and editor of many books, Benét won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1942 volume of poetry, The Dust which is God. A longtime resident of Greenwich Village, he was the brother of writer Stephen Vincent Benét and writer and social worker Laura Benét, and was married four times; his second wife was poet Elinor Wylie, with whom Cather was acquainted.
Pearson, Norman Holmes (1909-1975). American educator, author, and critic. Pearson briefly corresponded with Cather when he was co-editing the Oxford Anthology of American Literature (1938) with William Rose Benét. At the time he was a PhD student at Yale University, from which he had received his BA He served in the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during World War II, bringing him in contact with the expatriate American poets Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and Ezra Pound. He helped Pound avoid a charge of treason and served as H.D.’s literary executor. He had a distinguished career as Professor of English and American Studies at Yale.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
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
Burgess 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.
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
The Oxford Anthology of American Literature (1938) ; edited by William Rose Benét and Norman Holmes Pearson and
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
