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 |
Miss Willa Cather asks me to inquire whether there is a book of the membership list of the National Institute of Arts and Letters later than the one issued in 1940 - she has none later than that. If so, would you kindly send a copy to me at Room 1202, 7 Dey Street, New York City2. Miss Cather was in California3 for a long while during the last year and it may be that a later book was lost or mislaid at her publisher4's office.
Very truly yours, Sarah J. Bloom5 Secretary Miss Felicia Geffen Assistant to the President6, The Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155th Street, New York, N. Y.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3250.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3250
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Felicia Geffen 1
- Date letter was written
- September 9, 1942
- 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
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.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
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.
Train, Arthur Cheney (1875-1945). American lawyer and author. Born and raised in Boston, MA, Train took his law degree at Harvard University in 1899. He moved to New York City to practice law and in 1905 began publishing magazine short stories based on his experiences in the New York District Attorney’s office. His lawyer hero, Ephraim Tutt, who first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1919, became immensely popular. From 1941 until his death, Train served as President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, of which Cather was a member and which awarded her its gold medal for fiction in 1944.
Place Annotations
