The Selected Letters of Willa Cather ed. by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout (review)

As an assertion of control over one’s public image, Willa Cather’s refusal to allow direct quotation of her letters as stipulated in her will is second only to the shenanigans of Thomas Hardy. Late in his life, Hardy secretly wrote nearly every word of the two-volume biography attributed to his second wife. And the ruse worked. It took scholars more than a decade to realize that Florence Hardy’s work, published the year of her husband’s death, was, in fact, Thomas Hardy’s autobiography.

It has taken far longer to pry Cather’s correspondence from her phantom grip. Now that the deed is done, Cather, wherever she is, can hardly be pleased. Still, I like to think that, as an astute judge of quality workmanship, she would find it impossible to resist The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Coeditors Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout have done a magnificent job in every respect. Their selections are exactly the right ones—each of the 566 documents offered in this volume is fascinating in its own way—and their editorial apparatus moves us gently from letter to letter, never offering too much or too little detail. The index, vitally important in a book of this sort, could not be more thorough. A welcome biographical directory provides essential information on the wide circle of people in Cather’s life, those to whom she wrote and mentioned.

It helps, of course, that Cather was a captivating letter writer (as opposed to, say, Ernest Hemingway, whose correspondence rarely displays his celebrated style at its best). Especially when addressed to trusted friends or family members, her letters manifest the same unerring word choice and precision of expression as her greatest fiction.

But what do we learn that is new? On one level, very little. Although unable to quote them, Cather scholars have nevertheless poured over these letters for decades. The collection contains no major biographical surprises. On another level, however, this book changes everything. At last, lovers of Cather’s fiction can feel the full force of the writer’s personality, as intimately expressed in some of her most personal prose. It is an extraordinary, sometimes daunting personality. Readers of this superbly edited collection will feel that they are meeting this major American writer for the first time. We see, up close, her imperiousness when dealing with her publishers, her strong artistic likes and dislikes (Cather was rarely lukewarm about anything), her deep love for her parents and siblings, her passion for beautiful rugged places—the Great Plains, New Mexico, and Grand Manan Island—and her generosity toward others, especially friends in Red Cloud left penniless in the midst of the Dust Bowl.