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 will never give my consent to a radio adaptation to any book or story of mine. I have just written the same thing3 to Houghton Mifflin. I write this myself, and it may enable Miss Leger4 to meet all such requests while you are away.
The whole scheme is for the benefit of the adaptor.
Willa Cather May 22ndYes, I would like to keep “December Night”5 off the radio6. All books, short stories and parts of books.
MAY 23 1946Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2745.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2745
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only with date stamp on verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- May 22 [1946]
- 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
Cather sent a telegram to Ferris Greenslet denying radio adaptation of My Ántonia on 13 May 1946 (#1731), then followed it with a longer letter explaining her position (#1734).
On 23 May 1946, Knopf replied that he actually wondered whether the prohibition on excerpting Death Comes for the Archbishop in anthologies applied to the "December Night" excerpt, which had been published separately by Knopf in 1933.
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.
Leger, Antoinette Kluf (c. 1904-after 1948). Alfred A. Knopf’s secretary. A New-York-born daughter of German immigrants, by 1930 Antoinette Kluf Leger was a young widow working as a stenographer at a publishing firm. By 1940 she was Alfred Knopf’s personal secretary and continued to work in that capacity until at least 1948.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
December Night (1933) by Willa Cather
