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#2736: Willa Cather to Alfred A. Knopf, [June 14, 1945]

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Willa Cather
6/45

"Sapphira and the Slave Girl"3

On the surface it is a novel about the jealous persecution of a beautiful mulatto slave by her mistress,

Around that sultry, slowly burning episode Miss Cather has created

the fabric of three clashing ways of life: the way of those who believe in slavery, the way of those who do not, and the way of the slaves themselves.

Miss Cather's triumph
is that she has been able to write a fine novel about slavery and the South in which the Civil War itself is dropped out as an irrelevance to her work of art.

CHARLES POORE4

New York Times
Dear Alfred1;

I think Canby's5 notice6 of Sapphira7 rather too literary. I find this one more human and more interesting.

Hastily W. S. C. 1945 JUN 15 AM 9:25 :