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 |
NORTHEAST HARBOR2
MAINE K 7/12 July 10th Dear Alfred1:
Surely you have done nobly by me in the matter of the little pamphlet4! I don't see how you could manage to get out such an attractive piece of printing5 in these days of all-shortages. I am very pleased and deeply grateful.
I have had the carpenter make me a proper writing table. It will be installed tomorrow, and I shall be able to write more plainly.
Perhaps if you make up an ad from several people you would like something like the enclosed.
Miss Lewis6 always jeers at me when I attempt to write advertising, but this is not professional, it is simply how I feel about the book7.
W. S. C. 1944 JUL 12 AM 9:27 ASTICOU INNNORTHEAST HARBOR
MAINE
Congratulations on your good fortune in securing Kessel's8
book.
"Army of
Shadows."7
Here at last is a book that tells us how
the
French
Underground
worked; incident by incident, sacrifice by
sacrifice. The The courage and the constancy
(and the resourcefulness) of all the unconquered and un-bought people of
France9—this Russian has found a
way bring it all before one's eyes. If this book is
made into a film, it will surely stir this country.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2730.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2730
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- July 10 [1944]
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Knopf printed an updated version of his pamphlet on Cather, one that includes reviews of Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940).
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.
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.
Kessel, Joseph (1898-1979). French aviator, author, and journalist.
Born in Argentina, at age ten Joseph Kessel emigrated with his
family to Paris, France. He served as a pilot in both World Wars I and II;
his first book, The Crew (1923), is about his World
War I experiences. He wrote over fifty novels, which were popular in France,
and also worked as a journalist for Le Figaro, France-Soir, and other periodicals. From 1939 to 1940
he served as a war correspondent and then as an aide to General Charles de
Gaulle during WWII. Willa Cather so greatly admired Kessel’s novel about the
French Resistance, Army of Shadows (1944), published
in French in Algiers in 1943 as L’arme e des ombres
and published in translation in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., that she
granted rare permission to use her name in promoting the book.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Willa Cather: A Biographical Sketch, an English Opinion, and an Abridged Bibliography (1926) by Anonymous [Willa Cather]
Army of Shadows (1944) by Joseph Kessel
