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#3243: Sarah J. Bloom on behalf of Willa Cather to Felicia Geffen, November 15, 1946

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passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. written text
November 15, 1946. Dear Miss Geffen1:

Miss Cather has gone to California3 and she will not, therefore, be able to attend the Annual Meeting on November 19th. There is illness in her family, and she asked me not to forward her mail. I have just returned from a month's vacation, which will explain the delay in acknowledging your letter.

Very truly yours, Sarah J. Bloom4 Secretary

Information about this letter:

Source File:
cat.let3243.xml
Letter identifier
3243
Contents
Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written
Felicia Geffen 1
Date letter was written
November 15, 1946
Place letter was written
New York, New York, United States2
Location of original letter
Cather, Willa (1873-1947), Member Archives, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

Person Annotations

1562

Geffen, Felicia (1903-1995). American Academy of Arts administrator. Born in New York City, youngest daughter of a rare-book dealer, Felicia Geffen graduated from Hunter College, where she studied music. She became administrative assistant to conductor Walter Damrosch, who later became director of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She corresponded with members of the Academy, including Cather, about Academy business and functions. Geffen became executive director in 1941, retiring in 1973. She married immunologist George Heller, then after his death, she married muralist Stuyvesant van Veen.

0102

Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States
California, United States

© 2004-2024, Willa Cather Archive. Emily J. Rau, editor. Updated 2023. The Willa Cather Archive is freely distributed by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. UNL Logo