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 |
and Annex ACCOMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H. 5 5
The work4 is really going very well. I'll be home5 in a week or ten days.
Saturday Dear Blanche1;I have had such pleasure in working here2 again. I walk a mile every day before I go to work. This morning I found six of the wild orchids I introduced you to last winter (cyprepedium). They were standing glittering with dew drops, under dark hemlocks. They were not quite so large as the florists', but more wonderful.
Lovingly W. S. C. AMERICAN PLANOPEN ALL THE YEAR RECEIVED
JUN 25 1940 AM
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3091.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3091
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only with date stamp on verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf 1
- Date letter was written
- [June 22, 1940]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
June 22, 1940, is the Saturday before this letter was stamped received.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- 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
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Cather was working on Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)
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
