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heavily on childhood memories and stories of slavery in pre-Civil War Virginia. A Royal Bequest
In the scholarly edition of the novel, Ann Romines, Professor Emerita of English
at The George Washington University, writes of the books Cather checked out
while researching the novel. They included The Life and Letters of John Brown,
edited by F.B. Sanborn; Wilbur Henry Siebert’s 1898 edition of The Underground
Railroad from Slavery to Freedom; and Théophile Conneau’s Captain Canot, or
Twenty Years of an African Slaver. On March 1, 1938, Cather/Lewis also with-
drew John Bunyan’s The Holy War, printed in Glasgow in 1763 (at left). The
Holy War reappears in the novel when the
miller Henry Colbert, unable to help Nancy
escape, finds comfort in Bunyan’s words.
The edition Colbert reads is the same one
Cather withdrew from the Library. Photo by Sam Falk © The New York Times, 1963
Photo by Harriet Shapiro
The charging cards also reflect Cather’s
great interest in the theater. As a young
woman she had written articles about
the theater for newspapers and McClure’s
Magazine. It was an interest she pursued The Library gratefully acknowledges
for the rest of her life, borrowing books by an extraordinary bequest from the
Oliver Goldsmith, Henrik Ibsen, George estate of Shirley Hazzard, who served
Bernard Shaw, and J.M. Barrie. Cather on our Board of Trustees from 1974
also followed the career of the young until her death in 2016. She was the
Thornton Wilder, checking out Our Town, author of The Transit of Venus, which
The Merchant of Yonkers, and The Angel won the National Book Critics Award
that Troubled the Waters. in 1980, and The Great Fire, winner
of the National Book Award for
For many years Cather had been thinking about writing a novel set in the papal Fiction in 2003, along with several
palace in 14-century Avignon, a city, Lewis recalls, “[that] of all French ones she other novels, two books of nonfiction,
loved the most.” Even as she was completing work on Sapphira, Cather turned and many New Yorker short stories.
again to the Library for titles about late-medieval Europe, withdrawing several
books about the crusades and histories of England, France and Spain. On April Her will provides for a very generous
21, 1941 she checked out Henry Osborn Taylor’s The Medieval Mind: A His- monetary gift to the Library along with
tory of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages. The titles her continuing royalties and those of
Cather withdrew stand out like an x-ray of her mind, the skeleton of the book her late husband Francis Steegmuller.
already in place but never completed. During her last years Cather also checked Royalties represent a percentage of a
out books she had read before, perhaps, she sensed, for the last time. The titles book’s sale, or a flat fee per book sold,
almost spring off the pages of the final charging cards. On January 24, 1947 she typically paid by the publisher to the
withdrew for the second time Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. The author or to an entity to which the
following month, on February 18, Andre Maurois’ Byron—Cather had written rights have been transferred.
about him as a girl—was also signed out.
The Library created the Goodhue
Two months later, on April 24, 1947, Willa Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage Society to recognize those, like Shirley
at the apartment she shared with Edith Lewis at 570 Park Avenue. Five weeks Hazzard, who have provided for the
later Byron was returned to the Library, probably by Edith Lewis. Library in their wills or estate plans.
Currently, there are 73 Goodhue
On March 15, 1953, Lewis wrote to librarian Marion King thanking her for her Society memberships. Each year, we
letter about her recently published memoir Willa Cather Living. It was King express our gratitude by hosting a
who had greeted Willa Cather all those years before at University Place. “I can’t special evening in their honor. This
tell you how your warm, generous praise of the book pleases me,” Lewis writes. year’s event is scheduled for Monday,
“If it seems a true picture to the friends who knew her, that is all I have wished April 16.
or hoped for…and when you imply that Miss Cather herself would have been
pleased with the book, that pleases me more than anything.” If you would like to join the Goodhue
Society or learn more about it, please
Lewis adds that family illness has left her very much occupied but she hopes contact Joan Zimmett, Director of
to return soon to the Library. In Cather/Lewis tradition, she concludes, “I have Development, at 212.288.6900 x207 or
a long list of books I want very much to read.” jzimmett@nysoclib.org.

Books & People Spring 2018 - PAGE 3