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 |
JAN 16 1923
DISTRIBUTION
____________
____________
____________ Monday Dear Mrs. Knopf1:
This list4 seems correct, though the
titles are incorrect. Ántonia5 is spelled "Antonio",
and there is a comma between O and Pioneers. Of course it should be simply "O Pioneers!6" People who haven't read the book always
get it
the title wrong—one has to tell them that it is in
the vocative
case, or refer them to Walt Whitman7's poem8 by the same
title.
I am sorry I cannot supply the material Mr. Johnson9 wants for notes. The poems have been printed in a number of anthologies, but he probably wouldn't care to follow them them up. Harriet Monroe10's "The New Poetry11" had rather the best selection12. Here is the signature Mr. Johnson wishes
Willa Sibert CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3004.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3004
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [January 15, 1923]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Records (MS-00062), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
On 13 January 1923 Knopf wrote asking Cather to check over a bibliography of Cather's works compiled by Merle Johnson to be published in Publishers' Weekly.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Whitman, Walter, Jr. (1819-1892) (“Walt”). American poet and journalist. Born in West Hills, NY, to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman and Walter Whitman Sr., Walt Whitman began his career in journalism as a printer’s apprentice. By 1846 he edited the Brooklyn Daily Eagle before moving to New Orleans to edit the New Orleans Daily Crescent. From 1850 to 1855 he built houses and worked in real estate in New York. Whitman first published his monumental work, Leaves of Grass, in 1855 and went on to produce eight more editions. Willa Cather, in an 1896 Nebraska State Journal article called Leaves of Grass “a sort of dictionary of the English language.” She borrowed the title of her novel O Pioneers! (1913) from Whitman’s poem, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” (1865). Cather also referred to Whitman in My Mortal Enemy (1926).
Johnson, Merle De Vore (1874-1935). American bibliographer. Johnson worked for many years as a commercial artist and illustrator while as a hobby he collected American writers. He published a series of bibliographical articles in Publishers Weekly, collected as American First Editions (1929), which became the authority for dealers and collectors on points determining first editions and issues. Cather was included among the 105 collectible authors in American First Editions, although David Moss compiled the checklist of her work.
Monroe, Harriet (1860-1936). American editor and poet.
Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago, IL, and earned a reputation as a
poet while still young. However, she soon realized how difficult it was to
make a living as a poet and worked as a journalist for many years. In 1912,
with money from a settlement and with wealthy Chicagoans as sponsors, she
launched Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, which
published, and paid fairly for, the work of poets who would become
recognized as many of the twentieth century’s best. Monroe solicited poems
by Cather for her magazine and published “Spanish Johnny” and “The Palatine”
in her anthology, New Poetry (1917), but Cather was
displeased at the typographical errors in them.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
"Pioneers, O Pioneers!," Drum-Taps (1865) by Walt Whitman
The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson
"Spanish JohnnyThe New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Willa Cather; edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson and
"The Palatine: In the "Dark Ages"," The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) by Willa Cather; edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice C. Henderson and
