Read complete books and articles on: Willa Cather

Cather, Willa Sibert - sīˈbərt kăthˈər, 1873–1947, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Winchester, Va., considered one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. When she was nine her family moved to the Nebraska prairie frontier. She graduated from the Univ. of Nebraska in 1895 and worked as a journalist and as a teacher in Pittsburgh. In 1904 she went to New York City. The publication of The Troll Garden (1905), her first collection of short stories, led to her appointment to the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. She eventually became managing editor and saved the magazine from financial disaster. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. For many years she lived quietly in New York City's Greenwich Village. The first of her novels to deal with her major theme is O Pioneers! (1913), a celebration of the strength and courage of the frontier settlers. Other novels with this theme are My Ántonia (1918), One of Ours (1922; Pulitzer Prize), and A Lost Lady (1923). The Song of the Lark (1915) focuses on another of Cather's major preoccupations—the need of artists to free themselves from inhibiting influences, particularly that of a rural or small-town background; the tales collected in Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and the novel Lucy Gayheart (1935) also treat this theme. With success and increasing age Cather became convinced that the beliefs and way of life she valued were disappearing. This disillusionment is poignantly evident in her novel The Professor's House (1925). She subsequently turned to North America's far past for her material: to colonial New Mexico in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), widely regarded as her masterpiece, and to 17th-century Quebec for Shadows on the Rock (1931), in both novels blending history with religious reverence and loving characterizations. The volumes My Mortal Enemy (1926) and The Old Beauty and Others (1948) present her highly skilled shorter fiction. Her intense interest in the craft of fiction is shown in the essays in Not Under Forty (1936) and On Writing (1949). Cather herself was a master of that craft, her novels and stories written in a pellucid style of great charm and stateliness.

See E. K. Brown and L. Edel, Willa Cather: A Critical Biography (1980); S. O'Brien, Willa Cather: the Emerging Voice (1987); J. Woodres, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (1989).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Willa Cather

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1.

A Reader's Companion to the Fiction of Willa Cather » Read Now
by John March, Marilyn Arnold, Debra Lynn Thornton. 849 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

In correspondence, Willa Cather confessed to planting some of her allusions deep. This reader's companion contains thousands of lively and informative entries on persons, places, and events, fictional and real, and on quotations, works of art, and other items to reveal meanings or provide background...
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In correspondence, Willa Cather confessed to planting some of her allusions deep. This reader's companion contains thousands of lively and informative entries on persons, places, and events, fictional and real, and on quotations, works of art, and other items to reveal meanings or provide background for understanding Cather's fictional world. At the same time, it offers insights into her real world and time, her interests, and her astonishingly broad frame of reference. A lifetime project of encyclopedist John March, the once unwieldy manuscript and notes have been verified, clarified, amplified, and organized by literary scholar Marilyn Arnold, with the assistance of Debra Lynn Thornton. The goal was to develop a work that would be useful to the reader while preserving March's "authorial presence" has resulted in a dictionary that will both enlighten and delight.
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2.

Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters » Read Now
by L. Brent Bohlke, Willa Cather. 244 pgs.

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Included in this book are Cather's radio speech accepting the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, accounts of her other public speeches, interviews conducted by Louise Bogan and Stephen Vincent Benet, and six little-known portraits of Cather.
3.

My Antonia » Read Now
by Willa Cather. 374 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
4.

O Pioneers! » Read Now
by Willa Sibert Cather. 312 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...By Willa Sibert Cather O PIONEERS! With colored...PIONEERS! ALEXANDRA O PIONEERS! BY WILLA SIBERT CATHER "Those fields, colored by various...Cambridge 1913 COPYRIGHT, 1913...
5.

The Song of the Lark » Read Now
by Willa Cather, Janet Sharistanian. 446 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's adolescent ability on the piano is encouraged by her eccentric German music teacher, Professor Wuncsch, and by the kindly but unhappily married Dr. Howard Archie. Set apart from the townspeople by her talents, Thea's friends...
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The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's adolescent ability on the piano is encouraged by her eccentric German music teacher, Professor Wuncsch, and by the kindly but unhappily married Dr. Howard Archie. Set apart from the townspeople by her talents, Thea's friends are far from conventional. At 17 she leaves them and her mother's influence to go to Chicago where she studies with the pianist Andor Harsanyi. Having overheard her singing in a church, he is the mentor who discovers the potential of Thea's singing voice and sends her to study with the chill and selfish Madison Bowers, whom she dislikes. Her story moves to Arizona when she and a wealthy young brewer, Fred Ottenburg fall in love. A tension between her relationship with him and the driving artistic impulse that has always ruled her develops and becomes the novel's compelling central theme. Cather's lyrical, atmospheric and moving novel is a thinly veiled autobiography of a female artist in America at the turn of the century. A mature work filled with memorable characters all of whom influence Thea in different ways, The Song of the Lark deserves to be read alongside O Pioneers! and My Antonia and fully justifies Cather's status as one of America's greatest twentieth-century writers.
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6.

The Professor's House » Read Now
by Willa Cather. 283 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...PROFESSORS HOUSE -2- THE PROFESSORS HOUSE by WILLA CATHER "A turquoise set in silver, wasnt it? . . Yes, a...ALFREP .A. KNOPF New York mcmxxv COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY WILLA...
7.

The World of Willa Cather » Read Now
by Mildred R. Bennett. 286 pgs.

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...The World of Willa Cather THE WORLD OF WILLA CATHER By MILDRED R. BENNETT New Edition with Notes and Index...permission in writing from the publisher. THE WORLD OF WILLA...
8.

Willa Cather and the Art of Conflict: Re-visioning Her Creative Imagination » Read Now
by Patrick W. Shaw. 194 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

"Although some scholars may object to the hyper-close relationship of this analysis to Cather's personal life, the end result is a challenging and intriguing addition to Cather scholarship."—Choice
9.

Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism » Read Now
by Joan Acocella. 127 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

EXPANDING on her absorbing and controversial 1995 New Yorker article, Joan Acocella examines the politics of Willa Cather criticism: how Cather's work has been seized upon and often distorted by critics on both the left and the right. Acocella argues that the central element of Cather's works was...
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EXPANDING on her absorbing and controversial 1995 New Yorker article, Joan Acocella examines the politics of Willa Cather criticism: how Cather's work has been seized upon and often distorted by critics on both the left and the right. Acocella argues that the central element of Cather's works was not a political agenda but rather a tragic vision of life. This beautifully written book makes a significant contribution to Cather studies and at the same time points out the follies of political criticism in the study of all literature.
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10.

Becoming Modern: Willa Cather's Journalism » Read Now
by M. Catherine Downs. 178 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
11.

The Stuff of Our Forebears: Willa Cather's Southern Heritage » Read Now
by Joyce McDonald. 144 pgs.

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Willa Cather is best known for her depiction of pioneer life on the Nebraska plains. Despite her association with Nebraska, however, author Joyce McDonald demonstrates that Cather's works yield a remarkable wealth of themes and literary modes that connect her to her Virginia childhood and a southern literary tradition.
12.

Willa Cather and the American Southwest » Read Now
by John N. Swift, Joseph R. Urgo. 172 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

Willa Cather's New York: New Essays on Cather in the City » Read Now
by Merrill Maguire Skaggs. 318 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
14.

Isolation and Masquerade: Willa Cather's Women » Read Now
by Frances W. Kaye. 206 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Isolation and Masquerade Willa Cathers Women PETER LANG New York...Weller Isolation and masquerade: Willa Cathers women / Frances W. Kaye...bibliographical references and...
15.

Willa Cather's Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual Literary Tradition » Read Now
by John P. Anders. 196 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Willa Cather is primarily known for her creation of strong female characters, yet her fiction often centers on male friendships. In this first full-length study of male homosexuality in Cather's short stories and novels, John P. Anders examines patterns of male friendship ranging on a continuum from...
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Willa Cather is primarily known for her creation of strong female characters, yet her fiction often centers on male friendships. In this first full-length study of male homosexuality in Cather's short stories and novels, John P. Anders examines patterns of male friendship ranging on a continuum from the social to the sexual. He argues that Cather worked in the familiar tradition of friendship literature inspired by classical and Christian texts and also borrowed from a homosexual legacy that is part of, yet distinct from, established literary traditions. In combining these two traditions Cather gave her fiction an unexpected depth and complexity.
Anders argues that Cather's artistic achievement is distinguished by her sexual aesthetics, an elusive literary style inextricably associated with homosexuality. A homosexual ethos and eros helped Cather develop a sensitivity to human variation and a style to accommodate it; the range of male friendship and masculine desire in her fiction demonstrates this gift of sympathy and registers its sincerity. Although Cather's wide play of feelings opened her to the imaginative possibilities of human differences, the subject of homosexuality does more than humanize her fiction. It also enabled her to refine her characteristically subtle and elusive style, becoming, in effect, the objective correlative of her art, dramatizing the diversity of human nature as it deepens the mystery of her w
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