Willa Cather's will prevents the collection and publication of her correspondence; her executors have always honored her will. Stout's book is a calendar of the letters with a paraphrased summary of each. As more letters are found, paraphrases are being posted on the Cather Archive website:

http://cather.unl.edu/index.calendar.html

This book and the website are critical to Cather scholars, since the letters themselves are scattered over many, many collections throughout the country. The paraphrases are better than nothing, but they are problematic in that they are one person's "take" on each letter. Stout has done a good job, as far as she's gone, but Cather scholarship would hugely benefit from a complete edited collection of the letters themselves. This cannot be done unless Cather executors give the green light. I think they ought to do so because the other prohibitive feature of Cather's will is that the letters may not be quoted. Some (and increasingly, many) Cather scholars are ignoring that and "quoting" the letters, yet frequently not using quotation marks. This makes for unfortunate confusion in Cather scholarship ( )