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 |
I have consulted three editions of "L' E'ducation"4, and they all agree with my own copy5 as to sub-title; Histoire, not Roman. I enclose evidence, from a book printed as late as 1922.
Of course she6 used the
wrong conjunction7 in speaking of the
opera8, but as you stay it makes the text less
stiff to leave it as she spoke it—with trivial,
but never important, imperfections. A whipper-snapper little french teacher would
not have failed et to
say "et Iseult."
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3026.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3026
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes enclosed book page.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ellery Sedgwick 1
- Date letter was written
- [late December 1932]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter was likely written soon after Cather's December 9, 1932, letter to Sedgwick (#3025).
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes enclosed title page of Lettres de G. Flaubert a sa nièce Caroline, which contains a list of Flaubert's works.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Ellery Sedgwick Papers, 1989-1969 (Ms. N-854), Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA
Individual Annotations
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
In "A Chance Meeting," Mme. Grout is quoted saying, "You heard the performance of Tristan and Iseult last night?"
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.
Grout, Caroline Hamard (1846-1931). Niece of Gustave Flaubert, memoirist. Born near Rouen, France, Caroline Hamard is the “Caro” of Gustave Flaubert’s Lettres à sa Nièce Caroline (1906). When she was two months old, her mother, Flaubert’s sister, died and her father was incapacitated by mental illness. She was raised by her maternal grandmother and uncle Gustave at their home, Croisset. Her first husband, Ernest Commanville, died in 1890; she was married to Dr. Franklin Grout from 1900 until his death in 1920. Her Souvenirs sur Gustave Flaubert was published in 1897 as the preface to the first edition of Flaubert’s correspondence, and her memoir about her uncle, Heures d’autrefois. Mémoires inédits. Souvenirs intimes et autres textes, was published posthumously in 1999. In 1930, when she was known as Caroline Franklin Grout, Willa Cather met her at the Grand-Hôtel d’Aix in the French resort town Aix-les-Bains. Cather’s essay “A Chance Meeting,” first published in the February 1933 Atlantic Monthly and collected in Not Under Forty (1936), recounts how she met Grout during the intermission of a concert and and enjoyed wide-ranging conversations with her in ensuing days.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
A Sentimental Education (1869) by Gustave Flaubert
"A Chance Meeting," Atlantic Monthly (February 1933) by Willa Cather
Tristan und Isolde (1865) by Richard Wagner
