M. A. De Wolfe Howe ([November 8, 1922])

#3033: Willa Cather to M. A. De Wolfe Howe, [November 8, 1922]

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NUMBER FIVE BANK STREET³ Wednesday Dear Mr. Howe¹;

I have just called Mr. Canby⁴ up to reprove him for his editorial bad manners, but he is not in town². It never occurred to me that he would publish that article⁵ before the Atlantic⁶ review⁷ came out! I never heard of such doings! I sent it to him one Saturday, he publishes it the next, never sending me proofs. I sent it the moment it was written simply to get it off my desk, to keep it from getting lost in the mass of letters from soldiers⁸ which fill all my desks and tables, - I can't get them answered.

I'd of course have no objection to your using a re-print. I asked Canby's assistant when I called up the office, and h she said they would have none.

Yes, I had seen the review⁹ of my book¹⁰ in the Atlantic, and liked it very much.

Faithfully yours Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let3033.xml
Letter identifier: 3033
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: [November 8, 1922]
Explanation of conjectured date: This letter was likely written on the Wednesday following the publication of "The House on Charles Street" in the Literary Review on November 4, 1922.
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.

Letters written in response to Cather's novel One of Ours, which is partially set in France during World War I.

Person Annotations

0232

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.

0291

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

New York, New York, United States

Work Annotations

"The House on Charles Street," Literary Review (November 4, 1922) by Willa Cather

Atlantic Monthly

"[review of "Memories of a Hostess"]," "The Atlantic Bookshelf," Atlantic Monthly (December 1922) by Willa Cather

"The Atlantic's Bookshelf," Atlantic Monthly (November 1922) by Gamaliel Bradford

One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather