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'd have answered your letter long ago but for great uncertainty about your signature. You offer me a brilliant assignment. If I were Mr. Tolstoi4 I might take you up on it.
I want to do an article for the Atlantic5 sometime, on
a group of people whom Mr. Sedgwick6 and I
both know. But I seldom do short stories, and when I do I always get a thousand or
fifteen hundred dollars for them. I have promised six, and have no idea when I shall
do write them, as I am now working on a
novel7. I am sailing for France8 on Saturday to be gone about a year. Please tell Mr. Howe9 that any mail sent to me here will be
forwarded to my Paris10 address.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3035.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3035
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Atlantic Monthly staff member 1
- Date letter was written
- April 10 [1920]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's trip to France from May to November 1920 and by her later correspondence with Ellery Sedgwick (#3021 and #3022).
- 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.
Person Annotations
Unknown recipient. No further information is available about this person.
Tolstoy, Leo (1828-1910). Russian writer and philosopher. Born south of Tula, Russia, into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy served in the army in the Crimean War. His experiences there and during travels in Europe afterwards led him to philosophical and Christian anarchism. In 1861 he married Sofia Andreyevna Behrs, with whom he had thirteen children. She worked with Tolstoy on his novels War and Peace (1873) and Anna Karenina (1877) as secretary and copyist, but the marriage became increasingly unhappy. Tolstoy also came to espouse the economic theories of Henry George, incorporating them into his novel, Resurrection (1899). Cather began reading Tolstoy in her youth and considered him one of the greatest novelists.
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.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Atlantic Monthly
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
