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 |
Went to England3 on business May 1st returned July 15th, went into hospital for operation. Went home Sept 1, not very well. Taking Elsie4 up to school bringing her clothes
destroyedInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3332.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3332
- Contents
- Document is two handwritten leaves. In October 1947, Edith Lewis purchased from rare book and manuscript dealer Louise Stegner of Omaha, NE, forty-nine letters from Willa Cather to Alice E. D. Goudy dated from 1890 to 1930. Lewis summarized these letters in an unused daily diary volume. At a later date, she destroyed the originals of the letters, but the summaries of thirty-seven of the letters, dated from 1890 to 1915, survive.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alice E. Dailey Goudy1
- Date letter was written
- September 29, 1909
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Charles E. Cather Collection (MS350), University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Person Annotations
Goudy, Alice Estelle Dailey (1853-1937). Cather’s high school teacher
and friend. Alice Dailey grew up in Nemaha County, NE, where she
attended the Nebraska State Normal School at Peru, NE, which her father had
helped found. She married fellow teacher Alexander K. Goudy in 1882; both
taught at the Normal School. When they moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1888, he
was superintendent of schools and she was the high school principal. She
encouraged Cather to attend the University of Nebraska. The Goudys moved to
Lincoln, NE, in 1891, when he was elected state superintendent of schools;
Alice Goudy was assistant, then deputy, state superintendent. After A.K.
Goudy suffered a stroke around 1900, the couple retired to Nemaha County.
Cather wrote to Mrs. Goudy for many years, although few letters have
survived.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Place Annotations
