Posted by Sue Hallgarth on May 31, 2013
An excerpt from an Interview with Andrew Jewell, co-editor of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (Knopf, 2013) by Rebecca Cross in “A New Peek at Willa Cather’s Private Life,” The Big Read Blog, May 21, 2013:
What do you think the anthology reveals about Cather, both as a writer and as a woman?
JEWELL: To my mind, it upends a lot of the stereotypes about her. Many people saw her as sort of reserved, sometimes isolated and grumpy, and as a writer that didn’t have much to do with the world. I think the reality that the letters reveal is just the opposite. She was very vibrant, she was very connected to a wide circle of friends and family. She was funny in ways that people find surprising. You can’t deny when you read the letters the life you feel there on the page. It’s a nice counterbalance to some of the portrayals that have been in her biographies. I think the reason for that [portrayal] in her biographies is partially—consciously or subconsciously—what emerged from the inaccessibility of her correspondence.
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Problematic Sources
The most reliable sources for information about Willa Cather have always been Cather’s surviving correspondence and the memoir Willa Cather Living by Edith Lewis, the woman who lived with Cather and shared her life for almost forty years. But until the recent publication of The Selected Letters, neither the letters nor Lewis’ memoir carried much weight in countering the stereotypes that have defined Willa Cather since her death in 1947 and all but buried her life partner, Edith Lewis. Continue reading …