The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
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MENUHIN, YALTAH (1921–2001): American pianist, poet, and artist, sister of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and pianist Hephzibah Menuhin.
MENUHIN, YEHUDI (1916–1999): American violinist, debuted with the San Francisco Orchestra at age seven.
MEYNELL, ALICE (1847–1922): British poet and essayist.
MICHELET, JULES (1798–1874): French historian; author of the nineteen-volume History of France.
MINER, HUGH (1871–1951?): Son of James and Julia Miner of Red Cloud; took over his father’s store and later became postmaster in Red Cloud; married Cather’s cousin Retta Ayre.
MINER, JAMES L. (1847–1905): A merchant in Red Cloud; the model for R. E. Dillon in “Two Friends” and Mr. Harling in My Ántonia.
MINER, JULIA ERICKSON (1844–1917): Norwegian-born wife of James L. Miner of Red Cloud; a good amateur musician; the model for Mrs. Harling in My Ántonia.
MONROE, HARRIET (1860–1936): Founder of Poetry Magazine and its editor from 1912 to 1936.
NANSEN, FRIDTJOF (1861–1930): Norwegian Arctic explorer.
NEIHARDT, JOHN (1881–1973): Writer about the Great Plains best known for Black Elk Speaks (1932); became Nebraska’s poet laureate in 1921.
NEVIN, ETHELBERT (1862–1901): American composer of art songs.
NEWBRANCH, HARVEY (1875–1959): An 1896 graduate of the University of Nebraska; editor of the Omaha World-Herald for fifty-six years; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1919 for an editorial condemning lynching.
NORRIS, KATHLEEN THOMPSON (1880–1966): California newspaperwoman and a prolific writer of fiction.
OBER, DR. FRANK ROBERTS (1881–1960): Prominent orthopedic surgeon from Boston who treated Cather’s tendinitis; responsible for Cather’s hand brace.
OSBORNE, EVELYN: A friend and fellow graduate student of Dorothy Canfield whom Cather met in Paris in 1902; the prototype for Virginia Gilbert in “The Profile.”
OTTE, FRED, JR. (1884–1956): One of Cather’s students at Central High School in Pittsburgh, and privately tutored by her; later a businessman and occasional correspondent of Cather’s.
OUIDA (PSEUD.) MARIE LOUISE DE LA RAMEE (1839–1908): English romantic novelist.
PATER, WALTER (1839–1894): English essayist and critic, known as a stylist.
PAVELKA, ANNIE SADILEK (1869–1955): Daughter of Bohemian immigrants to Nebraska, worked as the Miner family’s hired girl in Red Cloud; married a Bohemian farmer and raised a large family in the northern part of Webster County, Nebraska; prototype for Ántonia Shimerda in My Ántonia.
PEATTIE, ELIA WILKINSON (1862–1935): Columnist for the Omaha World-Herald and literary editor of the Chicago Tribune; wrote fiction for adults and children.
PERSHING, JOHN J. (1860–1948): Leader of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I; taught mathematics at the University of Nebraska when Cather was a student there.
PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON (1865–1943): American critic; professor of English at Yale for forty years.
PHILLIPS, DAVID GRAHAM (1867–1911): A “muckraking” journalist and writer of novels of political and social criticism.
PHILLIPS, JOHN S. (1861–1949): Publisher and editor who cofounded McClure’s Magazine with S. S. McClure.
POUND, LOUISE (1872–1958): College friend of Cather’s who went on to gain recognition as a scholar of folklore; the first woman president of the Modern Language Association.
POUND, STEVEN AND LAURA: Parents of Louise, Roscoe, and Olivia Pound; prominent citizens of Lincoln, Nebraska, while Cather was a student there.
POUND, ROSCOE (1870–1964): Brother of Louise Pound, graduate of the University of Nebraska, and prominent legal scholar; dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936.
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, PIERRE (1824–1898): French muralist.
RASCOE, BURTON (1892–1957): Editor, author, and critic of drama and literature whose column “The Day Book of a New Yorker” was syndicated in more than four hundred newspapers.
REYNOLDS, PAUL REVERE (1864–1944): The first literary agent in New York; founded his business in 1893 and represented many well-known authors; Cather’s agent beginning in 1916.
RICHARDSON, MARGUERITE (b. 1918): Youngest daughter of W. N. Richardson, prototype for Mr. Trueman of “Two Friends”; half sister of Winifred (Freddie) Richardson Garber.
RICHARDSON, WINIFRED (FRED): Daughter of W. N. Richardson, prototype for Mr. Trueman of “Two Friends”; married Seward Garber, son of Silas Garber and his first wife.
RINEHART, MARY ROBERTS (1876–1958): Prolific American writer well known for her murder mysteries.
RITTENHOUSE, JESSIE B. (1869–1948): Poet, anthologist, and critic who helped found the Poetry Society of America.
ROBERTS, ALTHEA (ALLIE): Classmate of Cather and of Mariel Gere.
ROD, EDOUARD (1857–1910): French Swiss novelist and critic.
ROE, E. P. (1838–1888): A Civil War chaplain who became an author of popular novels with religious themes.
ROSEBORO’, VIOLA (1858–1945): Fiction editor at McClure’s from 1896 to 1906; author of short stories and novels.
SCAIFE, R. L.: Production editor at Houghton Mifflin.
SEDGWICK, ANNE DOUGLAS (1873–1935): American-born English novelist.
SEDGWICK, ELLERY (1872–1960): Editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1908 to 1938.
SEIBEL, GEORGE (1873–1958): A literary and drama critic in Pittsburgh; married to Helen Seibel.
SERGEANT, ELIZABETH SHEPLEY (1881–1965): Author and journalist; wrote for the New Republic and others; met Cather in 1910 and wrote Willa Cather: A Memoir (1953).
SEYMOUR, ELIZABETH (BESSIE) (1857–1934): Cather’s cousin; lived with half brother Will Andrews and their mother, Sarah Andrews, sister of Cather’s mother, on a farm north of Bladen.
SHANNON, RICHARD S.: Married Cather’s niece, Margaret Cather, in 1938.
SHARP, CECIL (1859–1924): Scholar and promoter of English folk music and dancing.
SHERWOOD, CARRIE MINER (1869–1971): Eldest daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cathers in Red Cloud; married Red Cloud banker Walter Sherwood; lifelong friend of Cather and prototype for Frances Harling in My Ántonia.
SILL, PEORIANNA BOGARDUS (1833–1921): Music teacher in Red Cloud who directed the 1889 production of Beauty and the Beast in which Cather took part.
SPRAGUE, HELEN MCNENY: Daughter of Bernard and Helen McNeny, married attorney Leon Sprague.
STEFANSSON, VILHJALMUR (1879–1962): Anthropologist and arctic explorer.
STEICHEN, EDWARD (1879–1973): Photographer famous for portraits, especially fashion and portrait photography for Vanity Fair and Vogue.
TALBOT, FRANCIS, S. J.: Literary editor of America, a Catholic magazine; positively reviewed Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1927.
TARBELL, IDA (1857–1944): Famous “muckraking” writer; preceded Cather as an editor at McClure’s.
TAYLOR, CLARA DAVIDGE (1858–1921): Art gallery owner and promoter of modernist art; married to painter Henry Fitch Taylor.
TENNANT, STEPHEN (1906–1987): British aristocrat famous for his decadent lifestyle; his one novel, Lascar, was never completed.
TYNDALE, DR. JULIUS: Medical doctor in Lincoln during Cather’s college years who also wrote theater reviews; brother of Emma Tyndale Westermann.
UNDSET, SIGRID (1882–1949): Norwegian writer; winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.
VAN DOREN, CARL (1885–1950): American editor, critic, and novelist; author of The American Novel (1921).
VAN VECHTEN, CARL (1880–1964): American novelist, photographer, and music and drama critic.
VERMORCKEN, ELIZABETH MOORHEAD (1866–1955): An acquaintance from Pittsburgh who later wrote They Too Were Here: Louise Homer and Willa Cather (1950).
VINSONHALER, DUNCAN M.: A judge who represented a group of Omaha, Nebraska, citizens in commissioning a portrait of Cather.
WAGENKNECHT, EDWARD (1900–2004): American literary critic and biographer; wrote on Thoreau, Hawthorne, Sir Walter Sco
tt, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, and Abraham Lincoln.
WALPOLE, HUGH (1884–1941): British novelist who wrote several bestselling books in the 1920s and 1930s.
WARD, ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS (1844–1911): Popular American novelist and proponent of clothing reform for women.
WARD, MARY AUGUSTA (ARNOLD) (1851–1920): Well-known British novelist who wrote under the name Mrs. Humphry Ward.
WEBER, CARL J. (1894–1966): Literary scholar, taught at Colby College for thirty-nine years; wrote a biography of Thomas Hardy.
WEISZ, IRENE MINER (b. 1881): Youngest daughter of James and Julia Miner of Red Cloud; married Chicago businessman Charles Weisz; a lifelong friend of Cather’s and prototype for Nina Harling in My Ántonia.
WELLS, CARLTON F. (b. 1898): Professor in the Department of English at the University of Michigan; wrote or edited a number of books.
WEST, REBECCA (PSEUD.) CICELY ISABEL FAIRCHILD (1892–1983): English author, journalist, critic, and travel writer.
WESTERMANN, LOUIS AND EMMA: Acquaintances of Cather’s in Lincoln; Mr. Westermann was the owner and publisher of the Lincoln Evening News; the family was the prototype for the Erlichs in One of Ours.
WESTON, KATHERINE (KIT): College friend of Cather’s from Beatrice, Nebraska; daughter of the chairman of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.
WHEELWRIGHT, MARY CABOT: Founder of the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe.
WHICHER, GEORGE FRISBIE (1889–1954): Graduate of Amherst College, where he subsequently taught from 1915 to 1954; author of a biography of Emily Dickinson (1935) and other literary studies.
WHICHER, HARRIET FOX (1890–1966): A graduate of Bryn Mawr and Barnard; professor of English at Mount Holyoke from 1918 to 1944; afterward a freelance copy editor at McGraw Hill.
WHITE, WILLIAM ALLEN (1868–1944): journalist, novelist, and editor of the Emporia Gazette in Emporia, Kansas; a national spokesman for the American Midwest in the early twentieth century.
WIENER, CHARLES F. (1846–1911): Merchant who lived near the Cathers in Red Cloud; conversant in French and German; he and Mrs. (Fanny Meyer) Wiener (1853–1893) allowed Cather the use of their fine library and were prototypes for the Rosens in “Old Mrs. Harris.”
WILCOX, ELLA WHEELER (1850–1919): American poet, sometimes called “the poet of passion,” from the title of her book Poems of Passion.
WILLARD, MARY AND MAY: Friends of Cather’s in Pittsburgh; May was a librarian.
WING, TOM: Classmate of Cather’s at the University of Nebraska and a cousin of Edith Lewis; married Katharine Weston.
WOOLLCOTT, ALEXANDER (1887–1943): American critic and radio personality, known for his wit; a member of the Algonquin Roundtable.
WYATT, EDITH FRANKLIN (1873–1958): Novelist, journalist, and social reform activist; wrote for McClure’s while Cather was an editor there.
YEISER, JAMES (JIM) (1878–1953): Youngest son of Judge George O. Yeiser, the prototype for Judge Pommeroy in A Lost Lady; became a reporter and worked in San Francisco.
YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE (1903–1987): French novelist and essayist, the first female member of the Académie française.
Note on Archives Holding Original Cather Materials
The existence of this book is due in large part to the excellent work of archivists in many different institutions both in the United States and in Europe. The attention they have given to Willa Cather’s original letters, both to protect them from decay and to make them accessible for research, has been crucially important for this effort and to Cather scholarship generally. We heartily thank and honor the archives, libraries, and foundations that have made our work possible.
In the many years we have spent in research on Willa Cather letters, we have relied on the cooperation of the nearly eighty institutions that hold the original documents. In this volume, we include letters that are held in more than forty institutions. A complete list of all those whose originals were transcribed for this book appears below. The whereabouts of two letters included in this collection—the February 17, 1916, letter to Katharine Foote and the March 28, 1927, letter to Stephen Tennant—are unknown; they are assumed to be in private hands. As we considered our selections for this volume, we were able to consult photocopies or, in one or two instances, transcriptions of some letters whose locations are presently unknown.
Several of the institutions listed below have large and particularly important Cather collections, and we especially wish to acknowledge the cooperation of these institutions: the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Harvard University, the Willa Cather Foundation, the Nebraska State Historical Society, the University of Vermont, the Morgan Library, Yale University, the Barbara Dobkin Foundation, Drew University, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the Newberry Library, the University of Virginia, and the Huntington Library.
Those interested in locating the original document of a letter included in this collection are invited to consult the list below and to visit the Willa Cather Archive at http://cather.unl.edu.
1. Allegheny College, Pelletier Library, Meadville, Pennsylvania
2. Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
3. Barbara Dobkin Foundation, New York, New York
4. Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
5. Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, New York
6. Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois
7. Colby College, Miller Library, Waterville, Maine
8. College of the Holy Cross, Archives and Special Collections, Worcester, Massachusetts
9. Columbia University, New York, New York
10. Cornell University, Carl A. Kroch Library, Ithaca, New York
11. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
12. Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, New Jersey
13. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
14. Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland
15. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
16. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
17. Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts
18. Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
19. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
20. Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana
21. Jaffrey, New Hampshire, Public Library
22. J. P. Morgan Library, New York, New York
23. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
24. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
25. National Library of Norway, Oslo Division
26. Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska
27. New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire
28. New York Public Library, New York, New York
29. Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois
30. Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, New Jersey
31. Stanford University, Stanford, California
32. Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas
33. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas
34. University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California
35. University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Special Collections, Research Library, Los Angeles, California
36. University of Chicago Library, Chicago, Illinois
37. University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan
38. University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Archives and Special Collections, University Libraries, Lincoln, Nebraska
39. University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
40. University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, Vermont
41. University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, Charlottesville, Virginia
42. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia
&n
bsp; 43. Wellesley College, Margaret Clapp Library, Wellesley, Massachusetts
44. Willa Cather Foundation, Red Cloud, Nebraska
45. Yale University, Beinecke Library, New Haven, Connecticut
46. Yale University, University Library, New Haven, Connecticut
Note on Works Cited and Consulted
Editorial notes and insertions throughout the book were written using several sources, both digital and print.
For general biographical information, in addition to the letters themselves, we regularly consulted James Woodress’s Willa Cather: A Literary Life (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), Edith Lewis’s Willa Cather Living (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), and Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A Memoir (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992). Mildred Bennett’s The World of Willa Cather (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1961) was also useful, particularly in preparing the early sections of this book.
All of the reviews of Cather’s work that we have quoted are from Willa Cather: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Margaret Anne O’Connor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Quotations from interviews are from Willa Cather in Person, ed. L. Brent Bohlke (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986). Joan Crane’s Willa Cather: A Bibliography (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982) is an extremely helpful guide to Cather’s long and diverse record of publication.
For information about individual works we have relied on the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series published by the University of Nebraska Press.
The Willa Cather Archive (http://cather.unl.edu) and its collection of digital materials, including both original resources and digital forms of some works listed above, was consulted heavily. The Archive now incorporates A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather, ed. Janis P. Stout (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), in A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather: An Expanded, Digital Edition, ed. Janis P. Stout and Andrew Jewell. See http://cather.unl.edu/index.calendar.html.
Bibliographic information for texts not authored by Willa Cather, both books and magazines, was found through various resources, but we would especially like to acknowledge the HathiTrust Digital Library, at http://www.hathitrust.org, for its fine collection of digital materials.