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 |
INCORPORATED BORZOI
BOOKS
730 FIFTH AVENUE
New York Cables: KNOPF NEW YORK TELEPHONES: CIRCLE 7-7670 November 20, 1934. Dear Mr. Ruzicka1:
Mr. Knopf3 has referred your letter to me and
asked me whether I would like to make any suggestion to you. You will, of course,
see the proofs4; beyond that, I think there is nothing
I can say except that the story takes place in Chicago5 and in the Middle
West, and that two-thirds of it occurs
in the year nineteen hundred and two — a period which we both remember, I think.
Certainly it was a time when everything, from methods of locomotion to dress and
complexion, were as different as possible from those of today. There are one or two
places in Chicago where I can still get the feeling of the year nineteen two
1902, but there are not many such places
left.
Please give my regards to Mrs. Ruzicka6 and I hope to see you both when I am settled again for the winter. I have just returned to town.2
Yours sincerely, Willa Cather Rudolph Ruzicka, Esq. Dobbs Ferry New York7 kInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2992.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2992
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Rudolph Ruzicka 1
- Date letter was written
- November 20, 1934
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Rudolph Ruzicka papers, 1834-1980 (MS-1078), Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, Hanover, NH
Person Annotations
Ruzicka, Rudolph (1883-1978) (“Rudolf”). Czech-American wood
engraver, illustrator, painter, and type designer. Born in
Kourim, Bohemia, Rudolf (later also spelled Rudolph) Ruzicka moved with his
family to Chicago, IL, in 1894, where he took drawing lessons at the Hull
House School, apprenticed as a wood engraver, and studied at the Art
Institute of Chicago. In 1903 he moved to New York City and worked engraving
bank notes while taking classes at the Art Students’ League and the New York
School of Art. Cather likely first met Ruzicka around 1910, when his
classmate painter Earl Brewster married Edith Lewis’s college classmate
Achsah Barlow. Ruzicka married Filomena Sprova in Prague, Czhecoslovakia, in
1914, and they had two daughters, Tatiana and Veronica. He is best known for
his collaborations on fine press editions and for his type design,
including, beginning in 1935, linotype fonts. He produced designs for the
dust jackets of Obscure Destinies (1932), Lucy Gayheart (1935), and Sapphira
and the Slave Girl (1940), and Cather and Lewis sent out Christmas
cards featuring his designs in 1915, 1916, and 1935. Ruzicka attended
Cather’s funeral and helped Edith Lewis design Cather’s tombstone. Ruzicka
lived in various locations in Westchester County, NY, until his wife died c.
1961 and he moved to Norwich, VT, to live with his daughter, Veronica Laing.
He died in Hanover, NH.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Ruzicka, Filomena Sprova (c. 1883-c. 1961). Wife of Rudolph Ruzicka.
Filomena Sprova married Rudolph Ruzicka in Prague, Czechoslovakia,
in 1914 and moved with him to the New York City area, where they had two
children, Tatiana and Veronica. Cather was acquainted with Filomena through
her husband.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Lucy Gayheart (1935) by Willa Cather
