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 |
NORTH 6127 38 SAINT VINCENT STREET
TORONTO2 June 22nd Dear Mr. Sedgwick1:
I am very pleased to hear from you and to know that you still remember me. I am rugged in health these days, and am working on a new novel3 after a nine months' vacation in France4 last year. I still live in New York5 at no. Five, Bank street6, though I am usually there for only a few months in the winter. I hope I may see you sometime when you are in New York, as I seldom go to Boston7—haven't been there, indeed, for years. The Atlantic8 in the only American magazine I read. How good Archer9's article10 was last month!
Sincerely yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3022.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3022
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ellery Sedgwick 1
- Date letter was written
- June 22 [1921]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's travel to France in 1920 and her visit with the Hambourgs in Toronto in 1921.
- Place letter was written
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Ellery Sedgwick Papers, 1898-1969 (Ms. N-854), Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA
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.
Person Annotations
Sedgwick, Ellery (1872-1960). American magazine editor. Born
in New York City to parents from a distinguished New England family, Ellery
Sedgwick graduated from Harvard University in 1894. He was assistant editor
of the Youth’s Companion (1896-1899) and then editor
of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1900-1906—renamed
Leslie’s Monthly then American
Illustrated Magazine). He worked from 1906 to 1907 at McClure’s Magazine and briefly as a book editor at D.
Appleton and Company; in 1909 he began his long run as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which he had bought in 1908. Cather
evidently first met Sedgwick when they both worked at McClure’s, although she may also have encountered him at the home
of Annie Adams Fields in Boston. When Sedgwick wrote to Cather soliciting a
review of Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent
Friendships, Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James Fields
(1922, edited by MA DeWolfe Howe), she identified the Atlantic as “the only American magazine I read” (#3021). She also
published the poem “Poor Marty” (1931) and the essay “A Chance Meeting”
(1933) in the Atlantic. Sedgwick’s wife Mabel, whom
he married in 1904, died in 1937. He sold the Atlantic in 1939, the same year he married Marjorie Russell. He
died in Washington, DC.
Archer, William (1856-1924). Scottish writer, critic, and translator.
Born in Perth, Scotland, William Archer spent several years of his
childhood in Norway with his grandparents, who had settled there; his
knowledge of Norwegian later enabled him to make his influential
translations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. Archer began his career in journalism
while studying at Edinburgh University. Moving to London around 1879, he
became a drama critic and translated Ibsen’s Pillars of
Society and arranged for its first English production in 1880. A
champion of modern dramatists such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and
J.M. Synge, Archer opposed censorship in the theater. However, during World
War I, he worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau. Cather knew of
Archer’s translations of Ibsen while she was at the University of Nebraska
in the 1890s; she met Archer in 1908 on a visit to London for McClure’s Magazine, which commissioned articles from
him. Although no correspondence between Cather and Archer has been located,
she counted him as a friend and recounted their friendship in a letter to
Ferris Greenslet (#1458).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
Atlantic Monthly
"The Great Stupidity," Atlantic Monthly (June 1921) by William Archer
