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 want to get a word to you tonight to tell you that both the songs3 came, and that you have saved me a great deal of trouble. Thank you, my dear, with all my heart. My hand has been out of splints for three days now, and is rather more good-for-nothing than before. That's temporary—if I spend most of my life having massage I guess it will loosen up!
With love Willa Cather Tuesday Mrs. Bryson Burroughs1 Metropolitan Art Museum Fifth Ave. & 81st St City2 THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ART
RECEIVED
MAY 9-1934
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2902.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2902
- 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
- [May 8, 1934]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Cather had likely asked Burroughs' help in getting copies of songs referred to in Lucy Gayheart (1935).
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
