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 |
Certainly3, you may announce a new book4 by me in the 1940 list. It may not be ready, but announcing it will do no harm. I am getting ahead with the story very well here2, and take real pleasure in it.
Please get out of the heat, if you have to throw all your "authors" to the winds!
Hastily W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3090.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3090
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf 1
- Date letter was written
- [August 27, 1939]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
August 27, 1939, is the Sunday between Blanche Knopf's August 23, 1939, letter to which Cather is responding and Knopf's August 30, 1939, response to this letter.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Irving Kolodin Papers, 1844-1986 (JPB 06-40), New York Public Library, Library for the Performing Arts, Music Division, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
In a postscript to her 23 August 1939 letter to Cather, Knopf mentioned that they were making up the 1940 list and queried whether they might mention a book by Cather without a title (Cather had withdrawn her earlier title in #3089 but withheld her new title).
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather
