[Rarebooks] FS: Important Willa Cather letter regarding DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP

[Charles Agvent]

CATHER, Willa AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) REGARDING DEATH COMES FOR 
THE ARCHBISHOP
Jaffrey [NH] Superb one-page letter on Cather's monogrammed printed 
stationery dated 15 October [1926] and SIGNED by Cather at the 
conclusion. Addressed to Dr. [Henry Goddard] Leach, editor of THE FORUM, 
regarding the first installmentof her best-known work, DEATH COMES FOR 
THE ARCHBISHOP, which was serialized in the magazine from January 
through June 1927. In full: "I'm so glad you like the first instalment 
-- it cheers one a lot to have an editor feel really pleased. The Virgin 
of Guadaloupe begins the second instalment -- it's well to sound that 
legendary note more than once, I think. Besides, that legend will set 
the stage for the second number as thePrologue does for the first. I'll 
send you the second, by the way, when I return to New York the first 
week in November. Cordially yours, Willa Cather." Cather first visited 
the small New Hampshire resort town of Jaffrey in 1917 for a three-week 
vacation but stayed for two months and worked on MY ANTONIA in a snug 
dormer room on the third floor of the Shattuck Inn. She would return 
regularly to Jaffrey in the years that followed, always staying in the 
same room, and eventually was buried in thetown. A rare example of 
Cather writing to an editor about the early stages of publication of her 
most important book. Usual creases. Near Fine  $7000

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