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 |
ELECTRIC LIGHTS
GARAGE LIVERY The Shattuck Inn5
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR
JAFFREY, N.H. ELEVATION 1200 FEET
PRIVATE BATHS
OPEN FIRES October 8th Dear Mr. “H. B;”1
Your review6 of my book7 has just reached me up here2 in the woods where I am working. It is the only one I’ve seen so far that outlines8 what I was trying to do in the story. I didn’t know I was writing a cross-word puzzle. One gets tired of repeating the same pattern, in the same sequence, forever, like an insect.
Might I ask you to send me another copy of that notice? I’d like one to send to my French publisher9 and translator10. This book may puzzle them, too, and your review presents the content of it better than I could, I’m sure.
Sincerely yours Willa Cather Willa Cather The Shattuck InnE.C. SHATTUCK
PROPRIETOR
JAFFREY2,
N.H. To "H. B."1 Editor of "Books on Our Table" New York Evening Post3 New York City4 N. Y. Editorial Offices JAFFREY N.H.2 OCT 10 1925 6:30 AM About the review of "The Professor's House" in 1925
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2973.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2973
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Herschel Brickell1
- Date letter was written
- October 8 [1925]
- 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
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Noting the subtlety and complexity of the novel and its structure, Brickell argues that the book suggests "most of us live our lives without any real perception of values." Distracted by work and life, "we watch, but with blind eyes, the passing of the years, until circumstances bring things into sharp focus, we suddenly begin to see, and a break-up such as the Professor suffered becomes altogether possible and understandable."
Person Annotations
Brickell, Herschel (1889-1952). American editor and critic. Born in Senatobia, MS, Herschel Brickell attended the University of Mississippi but did not graduate. He edited several newspapers in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi before moving to New York City in 1919 to edit “Books on Our Table” for the New York Evening Post. Brickell served as the general editor of the Henry Holt and Company publishing house, literary editor of the Post, and as a general editor for the O. Henry Memorial Prize Short Stories. In 1939 he won the Guggenheim Award for general non-fiction. Willa Cather told Brickell that his favorable review of The Professor’s House (1925) was the only one “that outlines what I was trying to do” (#2973). Brickell also favorably reviewed Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) in the North American Review.
Gustave Payot (1884-1960) Franco-Swiss publisher. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Gustave Payot and his brothers inherited their father’s book-selling business in 1900. They expanded the business into publishing, and Gustave Payot opened a branch in Paris in 1912. In 1923, the same year Payot & Co. became an independent publisher, Payot published Victor Llona’s translation of My Ántonia. Cather feared that The Professor’s House (1925) would puzzle Payot and Llona both. However, Payot did not publish any other books by Cather.
Llona, Victor Manuel (1886-1953). Peruvian-French writer and translator. Born in Lima, Peru, Victor Llona was raised and educated in Paris, France, where he entered the cosmopolitan café scene as a teenager. In 1906 he moved with his parents to Chicago, IL, returned to Paris in 1913 but left for New York City at the outbreak of World War I. On his return to France he became friends with both French and American expatriate writers and launched a career translating dozens of American novels into French. His translation of Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), Mon Antonia (1924), was one of his earliest translations. Before his return to France he married Florence Nelson of Chicago. They had two children, Doris and Eric, and his wife collaborated with him on some of his translations. The couple later divorced.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New York Evening Post
"Books on Our Table," New York Evening Post (September 8, 1925) by H.B. [Herschell Brickell]
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
