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 |
Your letter of March 29th has just reached me as I have been traveling3. I need scarcely say that it gives me great pleasure. I know certain parts of the West fairly well and have tried to write about them as they seem to me. That is as far as one can go. One’s feeling is not always a trustworthy guide, but in such matters it is the only guide one has. That two of my books4 should have reached you and interested you, I account a very great good fortune.
Sincerely and gratefully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2823.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2823
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 1
- Date letter was written
- April 16 [1931]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by #1039, in which Cather asked Ferris Greenslet to send Oliver Wendell Holmes Death Comes for the Archbishop, the second of Cather's novels Greenslet sent to Holmes.
- Place letter was written
- Pasadena, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- John G. Palfrey (1875-1945) collection of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Papers, 1715-1938, Harvard University, Harvard Law School Library, Langdell Hall, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
Cather went from New York City to Pasadena, CA, to visit her mother, who had suffered a stroke there in late 1928.
Person Annotations
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841-1935). U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Born in Boston, MA, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a physician and
man of letters, and Amelia Lee Jackson Holmes, Holmes, Jr., attended Harvard
College from 1857 to 1861, served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1864, and
studied at Harvard Law School from 1864 to 1866. He combined influential
legal scholarship with the practice of law until his appointment to the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He served from 1882 to 1902, as Chief
Justice starting in 1899. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt nominated him to the
U.S. Supreme Court, on which he served until 1931, authoring many important
opinions. Willa Cather evidently never met Holmes but admired him greatly.
Her friend Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant wrote “Oliver Wendell Holmes: Justice
Touched with Fire” in Fire Under the Andes (1927),
and Cather was delighted to receive a 1931 letter from him praising My Ántonia (1918) after Ferris Greenslet gave him a
copy. She then asked the offices of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to send him Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
