“[A] slow proposition on the market”

Willa Cather to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, February 6, 1922. Cather had been invited to lecture at the Bread Loaf School of English. She is wondering whether the school plans to cover her travel and living expenses:

A slow-selling author, who pays little attention to in-come, has to pay attention to out-go, or be in the hole at the end of the year. Now, I am NOT, with tightly compressed lips, throwing your magnificent sales in your face! I’m not a bit sore about being a slow proposition on the market; but I have to cut my plans according to my cloth in order to avoid worrying.

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout (New York: Knopf, 2013).

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