Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
I wish to acknowledge your letter to Willa Cather announcing that she has been elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. Miss Cather is at present in New Hampshire3, and I am forwarding the letter to her.
Very truly yours, Sarah J. Bloom4 SecretaryInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3257.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3257
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Nicholas Murray Butler 1
- Date letter was written
- November 16, 1938
- 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
Butler, Nicholas Murray (1862-1947). American educator and diplomat.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Butler studied at Columbia
University, earning his PhD in 1884 at age twenty-two and joining the
philosophy department in 1885. In 1887 he co-founded what would become
Teachers College, Columbia University, and in 1902 became president of the
university, serving until his retirement in 1945. Active in Republican
politics and in international affairs, he worked with the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, sharing with Jane Addams the 1931 Nobel Peace
Prize. Columbia conferred an honorary degree on Cather in 1928, and she and
Butler kept in occasional touch thereafter; she wrote that she was in accord
with his public statements on world affairs. Butler was also president of
the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Cather was elected to it in
1938.
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
