An Interesting Willa Cather Letter

ARECENT catalogue from Serendipity Books, of Berkeley, California (#43, July I985) offered for sale very interesting Willa Cather letter (item 9I, $900). It is an autograph letter on graph stationery, dated 7 March I9I6, to Henry W. Boynton, teacher, critic, and editor. According to the writer of the catalogue entry, twenty-one years later Cather annotated the letter for its then owner, Edward Wasserman, identifying the addressee and finding the letter foolish in retrospect. (The catalogue also offers for sale first editions of Cather's The Troll Garden, Alexander's Bridge, A Lost Lady, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Not Under Forty, and My Antonia, all inscribed by her to Wasserman, in the latter with the date of i i June I937. Wasserman was millionaire banker who was good friends with Carl Van Vechten and other New York writers and who in I937 published in London Velvet Voyaging, an account of his recent trip around the world. Also offered is the two-volume first edition of The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, selected and arranged with preface by Cather, these volumes inscribed to Cather's long-time companion and biographer, Edith Lewis. The prices for these books range from $900 to $I5oo each, reflecting in part the rarity of volumes inscribed by her.) The letter, in the catalogue classified as somewhat despairing and a cri de coeur, was written as she was beginning to think of writing My Antonia. Woodress reports: Elizabeth Sergeant first heard the idea for My Antonia early in I 9 I 6, while Willa Cather still was emotionally distraught over Isabelle's marriage [Isabelle McClung, Cather's close friend since I899]. She talked about the

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