Henry Goddard Leach (October 7 [1926])

#2972: Willa Cather to Henry Goddard Leach, October 7 [1926]

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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
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text of date and place stamps	stamped text
passage written by Cather on separate enclosure.	written text

⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Jaffrey²
October 7^th Dear Doctor Leach¹;

I am sending you the first instalment³ of the Archbishop⁴ today in a shabby wrapper. I shall use this note⁵ in the front of the book - ~~the~~ you can use your own discretion about using it before the serial. A note and then a prologue may be too much.

Why not, in some editorial comment of your own, remark that Miss Cather says⁶ - - and then quote this note just as I have written it, for I have tried to exactly put about what relation this narrative bears to history.

Faithfully yours Willa Cather

This history of that region and period⁷ are so little known that of course there will be questions, people will be puzzled.

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let2972.xml
Letter identifier: 2972
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Henry Goddard Leach¹
Date letter was written: October 7 [1926]
Place letter was written: Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States²
Location of original letter: Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY

Individual Annotations

Death Comes for the Archbishop was serialized in the Forum beginning in January 1927.

Cather did not use a note in the book edition.

A note under a portrait of Cather at the beginning of the Forum issue says: "The history of the Santa Fe region and the period concerned is so little known that readers will be curious to learn how much is fact and how much fiction. Miss Cather has made this comment: 'While many of the episodes in this narrative actually occurred, and others are matters of popular tradition, I have used them as a rug-maker uses colors rather than as a chronicler marshalls events. The two missionary priests with whom the story is mainly concerned I have called by fictitious names, not with any intention of disguise, but because it seems more respectful to do so in the case of men whose names and good works are so well remembered.'"

Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in New Mexico, primarily in the 1850s and 1860s.

Person Annotations

0131

Leach, Henry Goddard (1880-1970). American author, educator, and editor. Leach (Princeton University BA 1903, Harvard University PhD 1908) was a leading authority on Scandinavian literature. He served as editor of The Forum from 1923 to 1940 and president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation from 1926 to 1947. The Forum serialized Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and published “Double Birthday” (1929) in two parts. When Granville Hicks used a review of Shadows on the Rock (1931) in the Forum to launch what Cather perceived as an attack on her personally, she was aggrieved but accepted Leach’s apparent apology. It is not clear when Cather and Leach first met, and their extant correspondence relates exclusively to his work as editor of the Forum. However, in the 1940s she called him an “old friend” and apparently saw him socially in New York City (#2191).

Place Annotations

Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States

Work Annotations

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather