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 have no manners, none at all, but I'll write to you someday. I do want to thank you4 for the silk tops, cheap at any price, since they restored my two most useful walking skirts to a new life. I do manage to walk a good deal, though there is a lot else to do and I spend a good deal of time fooling about the little house, which I am beginning to love. It's hard work bringing a story5 back to its first flow after it has been choked off for months by fell circumstance—and it will never really come back to its original character.
I'll be here2 only two weeks longer—then I'll probably go to Jaffrey N. H.6 for awhile. I'll let you know. Goodbye, and thank you for shopping for me.
Yours W. S. C. Bk referred to "Shadows on the Rock." Mrs. Bryson Burroughs1 74 Washington Place New York City3 N. Y. U. S. A. NORTH HEAD N. B.2 AU 30 29 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2890.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2890
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber Burroughs1
- Date letter was written
- August 27 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Cather asked Burroughs to make this purchase in #2889.
Person Annotations
Burroughs, Ella Louise Guerber (1900-1985) (“Louise”). American librarian and curator. Ella Louise Guerber was born in Allentown, PA, and graduated from Cedar Crest College in 1919 and then the library school at Columbia University. At the time she met Cather in 1925, she was a reference librarian at the Denver Public Library and assisted Cather with her research on Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). In 1926, Guerber moved to New York City to take a position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she saw Cather frequently in person. She married Bryson Burroughs, Curator of Paintings, in 1928; he died in 1934. In 1950, when she received an honorary degree from Cedar Crest, she was Associate Curator of Paintings at the Met. After her retirement, she moved to Baltimore, MD, and then Princeton, NJ, where she died. Her friendship with Cather is documented by more than seventy letters from Cather to Burroughs from 1925 through Cather’s late life and by a diary documenting her in-person interactions with Cather from 1925 through 1927.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
