Mary Lou Karch, Collection on Edith
Lewis
Title: Mary Lou Karch,
Collection on Edith Lewis
Collector: Karch, Mary Lou
Dates: 1916-1971
Quantity: 1 box (0.2 linear
feet)
Collection Number: MS 0395
Language: English
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or email archives@unl.edu.
Historical Records Statement: Please see our statement on historical records and materials.
Preferred Citation: Mary Lou Karch, Collection on Edith Lewis (MS 0395). Archives & Special
Collections, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries.
Biography:
Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, on 7 December 1873, the first
child of Charles Cather and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. In 1883, when Cather was
nine, the family relocated to Nebraska. In 1890, Cather graduated from high school,
moved to Lincoln, and enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. In 1893 she
began working as the theater and drama critic for the Nebraska
State Journal and the Lincoln Courier. While
attending classes she wrote for the student newspaper, The
Hesperian, and became the managing editor in 1893. She graduated from the
University in 1895.
Cather wrote short stories, essays, and novels that focused on her Nebraska
experience, her early years in Virginia, her life in New York and Pittsburgh, and
her travels to New Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Her novels include Alexander's Bridge (1912), O
Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark
(1915), My Antonia (1918), A Lost
Lady (1923), One of Ours (1922), The Professor's House (1925), My
Mortal Enemy (1926), Death Comes for the
Archbishop (1927), Shadows on the Rock
(1931), Lucy Gayheart (1935), and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940). Her short story collections include
The Troll Garden (1905), Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and Obscure
Destinies (1932).
Edith Lewis was born on Dec. 22, 1882, in Lincoln, Nebraska. She worked as an editor
at Every Week and McClure's magazines. Lewis wrote a memoir on Willa Cather titled Willa Cather Living, published by the University of
Nebraska Press in 1953. Lewis died on Aug. 11, 1972.
For more biographical information on Cather and Edith Lewis, please visit
The Willa
Cather Archive
Scope and Content:
The majority of the correspondence and items in the collection are associated with
Edith Lewis. It includes letters between Lewis and Earl Brewster, Stephen Tennant,
Alfred Knopf, and others. The Olav Paus Grunt correspondence includes permissions to
use a Willa Cather quote in an article on Sigred Undset published in the Norwegian
magazine URD. The typescript list of Cather's personal
library is paginated by sections on "Novelists and Playwrights," "Poetry," "Poems,
Novels and Letters - In French," "History," "Criticism and Essays," "Biography and
Letters," "Science," "On Religion" "Travel and Miscellaneous," "General Literature"
and "Books about modern American authors, including herself, that were sent to her."
The list includes a column for authors, title, and a third column that sometimes
includes a publication date, comments on the books, or how they were received. There
is no clear indication on who created this list. The collection includes three
photographs, two of Willa Cather in the southwest and one of adobe buildings.
Subjects:
Cather, Willa, 1873-1947
Lewis, Edith
Cather, Willa, 1873-1947 -- Criticism and
interpretation
Cather, Willa, 1873-1947. A Lost
Lady
Container List:
Box 1. Folder 1. Correspondence, Willa Cather to Yehudi Menuhin, 1936, Oct. 12
Box 1. Folder 2. Front and title pages, A House of
Gentlefolk, incribed by Cather, 1919
Box 1. Folder 3. Floral card, dated by Willa Cather, 1934, Easter
Box 1. Folder 4. Envelope, note on Yehudi Menuhin by Cather, 1939
Box 1. Folder 5. Correspondence, Earl Brewster, 1916, 1942, 1946, undated
Box 1. Folder 6. Correspondence, Knopf, 1947-1971, undated
Box 1. Folder 7. Correspondence, Lattan, Mabel, undated
Box 1. Folder 8. Correspondence, Mnuchin, Marutha, 1938-1963, undated
Box 1. Folder 9. Correspondence, Mnuchin, Moshe, 1958-1959
Box 1. Folder 10. Correspondence, Menuhin, Yehudi, 1931-1947
Box 1. Folder 11. Correspondence, Menuhin, Yalta, 1935-1938, undated
Box 1. Folder 12. Cards, Redgrave, Rachel, Michael, undated
Box 1. Folder 13. Correspondence, Stephen Tennant, 1953, undated
Box 1. Folder 14. Correspondence, article, on Olav Paus Grunt, 1947
Box 1. Folder 15. Correspondence, 1937-1963, undated
Box 1. Folder 16. Correspondence drafts, to Kashland, undated
Box 1. Folder 17. Typescript list, Cather's personal library, undated
Box 1. Folder 18. Programs, Menuhin, Yehudi, 1937, undated
Box 1. Folder 19. Admissions ticket, recipe, 1939
Box 1. Folder 20. Book review, news clips, on Oliver Wendell Holmes, undated
Box 1. Folder 21. News clips, on Menuhins
Box 1. Folder 22. Photographs, Cather, Willa, undated
Box 1. Folder 23. Photographs, Mnuchin, Marutha, undated
Box 1. Folder 24. Photographs, Menuhin, Yehudi, undated
Box 1. Folder 25. Photographs, Menuhin, Yalta, undated
Box 1. Folder 26. Photographs, Menuhin, Hepzibah, undated
Box 1. Folder 27. Photographs, Menuhin, Zamira, Krov, undated
Box 1. Folder 28. Photographs, Menuhin family, Italy, undated
Box 1. Folder 29. Photographs, Menuhin family, undated
Related Material and Resources: Additional Willa Cather materials appear in several collections in the Archives &
Special Collections. A list of these materials is available in the repository. The
Archives & Special Collections also contains several collections of Willa Cather
books, including selected items from her personal library. These books can be
located through the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries on-line catalog.
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