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 couldn't do it in 500! Don't cut me4, please; anything about Mrs. Fields5 ought to have room to bow gracefully- - - You can't jam her into the subway at a rush hour. I simply love the book6, and am so grateful for its existence, and I've tried to make this little notice7 in tune with it.
I will write something very soon for either Canby8 or The Yale Review9, they both want something. I'll see where I think it fits best. I may ask you to glance at the proofs, and tell me if anywhere you spy anything that would in the least have offended her taste. How your book brings it all back, and how I've enjoyed remembering! I've simply escaped into the Park with it and gone back to another world, in these days of interviews and business and thirty-odd letters a day,- some angry, some so friendly, and many piteous. Thank you!
And will you send me another copy of the book to use in
for this subsequent article10? The one you did send me goes off this very day to a dear
Paris11, to a dear friend of Annie Fields, who since the war is much too poor to buy
it.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3031.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3031
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- M. A. De Wolfe Howe 1
- Date letter was written
- [September to October 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date range begins with Cather's return to New York in September 1922 and ends before the publication of "The House on Charles Street" in the November 4, 1922, issue of the Literary Review.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- 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.
Cather's review, as published, is 741 words.
Person Annotations
Howe, Mark Antony De Wolfe (1864-1960). American author and editor. Born in Rhode Island and raised in Pennsylvania, Howe earned a BA from Lehigh University and a second BA and an MA in English literature from Harvard University. He worked as assistant editor of the Youth’s Companion from 1888 to 1893 and of the Atlantic Monthly from 1893 to 1895. In 1899 he married Fanny Quincy, daughter of Boston mayor Josiah Quincy, and returned to editorial work on the Youth’s Companion, which he continued until 1923. He became firmly associated with his adopted city, writing and editing books about it and its famous figures, including Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields (1922), which Cather reviewed for the Atlantic Monthly and which inspired her essay “The House on Charles Street” (1922, later revised and retitled “148 Charles Street” [1936]). Cather corresponded with Howe in 1911 about a biographical essay he submitted for McClure’s Magazine, and they may have corresponded earlier when Cather’s poem “The Night Express” appeared in the Youth’s Companion or met in person at the Boston home Fields shared with Sarah Orne Jewett. As executor of Fields’ literary estate, Howe corresponded with Cather about the disposition of her letters to Fields. He died in Cambridge, MA.
Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social
reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields,
partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before
and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important
American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in
Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were
published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148
Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in
1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay
reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of
selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay,
retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under
Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which
included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would
become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.
Canby, Henry Seidel (1878-1961). American critic and editor. Born to a prominent Wilmington, DE, family, Canby received a BA (1899) and PhD (1905) from Yale University. He began teaching English at Yale in 1900 and was editor of the Yale Review from 1911 to 1922. In 1920 he founded the Literary Review of the New York Post, which became an independent magazine, the Saturday Review of Literature, in 1924; he served as editor until 1936. He became editor in chief of the Book-of-the-Month Club on its founding in 1926. Canby married Marion Ponsonby Gause, also of Wilmington, in 1907, and they had two sons. Cather’s acquaintance with the Canbys seems to predate 1922, when her cordial correspondence with the Canbys began. In the Literary Review she published "The House on Charles Street" (1922) and in the Saturday Review a letter to Wilbur Cross on Shadows on the Rock (1931) and an essay on Thomas Mann (1936).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Memories of a Hostess (1922) by M. A. De Wolfe Howe
"[review of "Memories of a Hostess"]," "The Atlantic Bookshelf," Atlantic Monthly (December 1922) by Willa Cather
Yale Review
"The House on Charles Street," Literary Review (November 4, 1922) by Willa Cather
