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 |
Red Cloud2 Nebraska November 5 My Dear Miss Evans1:
I have written to a friend4 who is occupying my apartment5 in New York, asking her to mail you a copy of the book you are good enough to desire. I bought up all the copies of 'April Twilights'6 eight years ago, and it is not now on the market.
If the book does not reach you, will you be good enough to write me at my New York address, and I will send it to you myself when I return to Bank street at the end of this month.
Very cordially yours Willa Sibert Cather Miss Edith Brewster Evans1 Green Tree Farm Clementon 7 N. J. RED CLOUD NEBR.2 5 NOV 1916 730PInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2802.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2802
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Edith Brewster Evans 1
- Date letter was written
- November 5 [1916]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Janet Zastrow Cook Willa Cather and Rare Book Collections, Allegany College of Maryland, Donald L. Alexander Library, Cumberland, MD
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
Person Annotations
Evans, Edith Brewster (1878-1964). American reader of Cather's works. Born in Rahway, NJ, the seventh daughter of Elizabeth and Robert C. Brewster, Edith Brewster married Frysinger Evans in around 1907. Their two children, William and Elizabeth, were born in Philadelphia, PA, but by 1916 the family had moved back to New Jersey, where she lived the rest of her life. Edith Evans wrote Cather about obtaining a copy of her volume of poetry, April Twilights (1903), which was no longer available commercially.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
