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 HARBOR
MAINE Dear Alfred1;
Delighted!4 I have been a passionate press agent for this book5 for a long while. The best things don’t always come in standard sizes.
Everything very pleasant here2 except the food. I shall probably be here until the middle of September—then Boston6 for a week or so.
Maine7 is a lovely country—“the land of Maine” a little Russian girl calls it—but the New England8 school of cookery is certainly the worst on God’s earth!
Yours always Willa Cather K 8/29 1945 AUG 28 AM 9:21Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2737.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2737
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto with date stamp on verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [August 27, 1945]
- 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.
Cather presumably learned that Knopf was publishing a translation of Thomas Mann's short novel The Tables of the Law. Knopf's 29 August 1945 response thanks her and says he is sending a copy of the book.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Tables of the Law (1945) by Thomas Mann
