Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 been out of town during the month of October and have not had an earlier opportunity to consider your letter.
In the letter3 which I wrote you from Maine4, I tried to state my position fully, and it would be a waste of your time and mine to take up the matter again. I have really nothing more to say. I can understand that you wish to make photographs of Nebraska5, but I do not see how you can reasonably expect me to assist you in this. “My Antonia”6, the book to which you refer, was written twenty-five years ago, and was an attempt to recall the impressions of childhood. The scene was presented in the kindly light of memory. The characters were types rather than individuals: some were entirely imaginary, some were composites7, and some were affectionate portraits of people8 who had long been dead when I wrote the book. Please accept this as a definite and final refusal of your enthusiastic invitation.
Evidently, Miss Speiser, you wish very much to make photographs of Nebraska, and you wish to make something rather picturesque. I wonder why you have not selected Mari Sandoz’9 book, “Old Jules”10? Miss Sandoz comes from a more picturesque part of the State11 than was the little farming community12 in which I grew up, and her book deals with a pioneer stage of development in the State. I have never met Miss Sandoz, but if she would collaborate with you, I think her book would make a good background for photographs of western Nebraska.
With kinest personal regards, believe meVery cordially yours,Willa Cather
P.S. Photographs are being returned under separate cover.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2974.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2974
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Jean Speiser1
- Date letter was written
- [November 1944]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Written the same year as #2441, likely soon after Cather's proclaimed absence during October.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
See #2441.
In a 1921 interview published in the Webster County Argus, Cather said one character in My Ántonia was partly based on a former Red Cloud man and partly on a man she knew in the East.
In a 1921 interview published in the Webster County Argus, Cather said she portrayed her grandparents, William and Emily Cather, and Julia Erickson Miner in My Ántonia. Other people, like Anna Sadilek Pavelka, were still living when Cather wrote the novel and were clear models for major characters.
Person Annotations
Speiser, Jean (c.1912-after 1971). American journalist, photographer, and writer. Born in Colorado to Dessa and George Speiser, Jean Speiser graduated from the University of Nebraska with a degree in journalism in 1933 and worked for the Omaha World Herald. In 1938 Speiser joined the staff of Life magazine in New York City where she worked as a researcher and photographer for 8 years. Speiser later was a journalist and photographer for the U.S. State Department, The Living Church, and UNICEF and wrote several children’s books, including River in the Dark (1960) and Schools Are Where You Find Them (1971). In 1944, Willa Cather declined an offer from Speiser to collaborate on a photojournalistic essay on Nebraska (#2441 and #2974).
Sandoz, Mari (1896-1966). Nebraska novelist and historian.
Born in Sheridan County, NE, to Jules Ami and Mary Elizabeth Sandoz,
Mari Sandoz had a difficult childhood under a violent and autocratic father.
When she was fourteen her family relocated from the Niobrara to the Nebraska
Sandhills. After graduating from the eighth grade at seventeen, she taught
at country schools and was briefly married to rancher Wray Macumber. In 1919
she moved to Lincoln, NE, where she worked various jobs and enrolled at the
University of Nebraska. After writing for many years with little success,
her book about her father, Old Jules (1935), won the
the $5,000 Atlantic Monthly Press Prize for nonfiction, launching her
writing career. Her other books include Slogum House
(1937), Crazy Horse (1942), and The
Cattlemen (1958). Willa Cather briefly corresponded with Sandoz in
1931 and was familiar with Old Jules.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Old Jules (1935) by Mari Sandoz
