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 |
I am going to decline your dinner invitation in favor of your only rival—my
Job,—which is, inin a way,
your job also. I am going to get seriously to work on Tuesday, and will need a very
quiet week for a take-off.
Do try to go to Town Hall3 on Tuesday night and hear the Kolisch quartet4 play the Beethoven5 A minor6—you’ll never regret it.
Yours W. S. C.The Gramophone people are coming tomorrow. Thank you!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2740.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2740
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [February 2, 1936]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
February 2, 1936, was the Sunday before Alfred Knopf responded to this letter on February 3, 1936.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Founded by The League for Political Education in 1921, The Town Hall is a performance and meeting space at 123 West 43rd Street in New York.
Known particularly for their performances of modern composers, in 1936 the Kolisch Quartet was composed of Rudolph Kolisch and Felix Khuner (violin), Eugene Lehner (viola), and Benar Heifetz (cello).
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.
Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827). German composer and pianist. Born in Bonn, in the Electorate of Cologne (later part of Germany), Ludgwig van Beethoven moved to Vienna, Austria, to study music composition with Joseph Haydn and became known as a virtuosic piano performer and one of the most important composers of his generation. Although his deteriorating hearing caused him to withdraw from conducting and public performance in 1811, many of his most admired works were composed after this withdrawal. He died in Vienna. Cather’s early journalism demonstrates her familiarity with Beethoven’s life and works, and she continued to enjoy listening to his works as a concertgoer.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825) by Ludwig van Beethoven
