Talk:Neighbour Rosicky

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Need help changing spelling of article's title

This is an American story, so the American spelling of neighbor should be used. In addition, Willa Cather used the title "Neighbor Rosicky" (not Neighbour). I've changed the spelling in the text of the article, but I am unable to change the spelling in the article's title. Would appreciate some help here. EnglishTea4me (talk)05:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We'd have to do a page move, which is easy enough. However, we should discuss this before changing the title.

I searched the Willa Cather Foundation website for (rosicky), and most of the hits seemed to use the British spelling. The same search at the Willa Cather Archive website turned up both. I couldn't get an online version of the 1932 edition of Obscure Destinies; in a 1998 edition by University of Nebraska Press, the story appears in the table of contents as "Neighbour Rosicky".

A Google search for ("womens home companion" rosicky) led me to the Google Books preview of Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real-World Writing, Writing The Real World, edited by Janis Stout; in it, Park Bucker's "Willa Cather's 'Neighbour Rosicky' and the Women's Home Companion" states that the story was published in the WHC as "Neighbor Rosicky" (p. 67); an end-note to that statement says "Beginning in the early 1920s, Cather adopted the British spellings for such words as 'color', 'splendour', 'plough', and 'grey'; she maintained this preference for the rest of her career" (note appears on p. 77).

It looks like a reasonable case could be made for either spelling: "neighbor" was the spelling used in the first publication of the story. However, this may have been a change made by the magazine; Cather's manuscript may have used "neighbour". (A passage on p. 71 of the Bucker article suggests this, but doesn't state it explicitly.) The British spelling seems to be the one used in Obscure Destines, which was the story's first appearance in book form.

I'd be inclined to keep "neighbour", since that's how it appeared in OD and since that spelling seems to predominate in more recent mentions. However, the variation in spelling would be worth mentioning in the article.

You're much more a Cather scholar than I am; I'd be very interested in your arguments on this. If it looks like there's a stronger case to be made for "Neighbor", I'd be glad to help with the page-move process. Ammodramus (talk) 13:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Ammodramus. Good to "see" you again. You've done some excellent scholarly detective work, and I've learned something new. I've looked at Janis Stout's Willa Cather and Material Culture and found that, as you said, Cather preferred English spellings (actually, I do too in some cases, but that's beside the point). Cather titled the story "Neighbour Rosicky," but American publishers used the American spelling, which accounts for why both spellings can sometimes be found in the same text. I've always held that we should go with the author's intent, and since Cather used the English spelling we should stick with that. I'll go back and change the in-text changes I made yesterday, reverting neighbor to neighbour, and will add a section explaining Cather's preference for English spellings. Thanks so much for your help. I'm glad our paths crossed again. EnglishTea4me (talk)14:53, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I came to the talk page to see why the British spelling of neighbor was used in an article about an American short story. The detective work, especially knowing that Cather began to use the British spellings, was excellent and I agree that the author's usage should govern our writing about it. Thank you for the work. Wuapinmon (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]