Allan Nevins (May 23, 1934) | Willa Cather Archive

#3148: Willa Cather to Allan Nevins, May 23, 1934

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ May 23, 1934. My dear Mr. Nevins¹:

I have often regretted that when I met you at the Strunskys'³ I did not tell you how much I enjoyed reading your FREÉMONT⁴. I read the book several years ago when I was staying at the Fairmont Hotel⁵ in San Francisco⁶ - there couldn't have been a better place to read it. I was seeing a good many people and usually came in late, but I always read for an hour or so before I went to bed, and I remember the reading of that book with very especial pleasure. It has a splendid swing and vitality, and certainly made the people of the period live before my eyes. I thought you had caught the spirit and the swagger (a delightful kind of swagger, after all) and thrown yourself into it and had a good time. I thought you caught exactly the right tone - the only tone which can at all make one feel a the thrill of that ~~kind~~ time in America. The story of these people written coldly with a touch of academic superciliousness would miss everything that makes their story so well worth telling. I am glad you did it before the wrong person got after it.

The night I met you at Mrs. Strunsky's I had a badly sprained hand, and it was beginning to be so painful that I did not feel in a very conversational mood. The hurt proved to be quite serious, and my hand was in splints from that time until about a week ago.

Very cordially yours, Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let3148.xml
Letter identifier: 3148
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Allan Nevins¹
Date letter was written: May 23, 1934
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Rare Book and Manuscript Library General Manuscripts Collection, 1789-2013 (MS#0001), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY

Individual Annotations

Cather stayed at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on several occasions in the 1930s. A grand hotel in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, the Fairmont opened in 1907.

Person Annotations

1263

Nevins, Allan (1890-1971). American journalist and historian. Born in Camp Point, IL, Allan Nevins graduated from the University of Illinois and first worked as an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post. Between 1924 and 1926 he served as literary editor of the New York Sun and after a term teaching history at Cornell University became literary editor for the New York World. Nevins taught history at Columbia University for 30 years, while continuing to work for the World until 1931. He also wrote two Pulitzer Prize-winning historical biographies: Grover Cleveland (1932) and Hamilton Fish (1936). Cather recalled reading Nevins's Frémont, the West’s Greatest Adventurer (1928) with “especial pleasure” (#1226). In 1939 Nevins founded the Society of American Historians, which Cather declined an invitation to join (#1443). Nevins also first alerted Cather of an “enterprise” to “popularize a number of American books in cheap editions among English readers”; in 1943 Heinemann, in collaboration with the Readers Union, produced a wartime edition of My Ántonia (1918) (#2752).

1468

Strunsky, Siméon (1879-1948). Russian-American editor and writer. Born in Russia, Siméon Strunsky came to the U.S. as a child. He graduated from Columbia University in 1900. He became an editorial writer and then literary editor of the New York Evening Post and later editorial writer for the New York Times. His second marriage, in 1910, was to the Russian-born Jewish activist Manya Gordon, with whom he had two children. Cather mentions having been at a dinner at the Strunskys, where she met Allan Nevins.

1469

Strunsky, Manya Gordon (1882-1945). Russian-American writer and activist. Born in Kiev, Russia, Manya Gordon emigrated in 1896, settling with her family in New York City. A supporter of the Russian Socialist Revolution Party, she worked to help Jews escape Russia and settle in New York. Her articles about Communist Russia appeared in magazines such as Harper’s, Century, and Forum. She married editorialist Simeon Strunsky in 1910, with whom she had two children. She later became a literary critic for the Saturday Review of Literature. Cather mentions having been at a dinner at the Strunskys, where she met Allan Nevins.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

San Francisco, California, United States

Work Annotations

Frémont: The West's Greatest Adventurer (1928) by Allan Nevins