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Contents:

"Grandmither, Think Not I Forget"
In Rose Time
Asphodel
Mills of Montmartre
Arcadian Winter
The Hawthorn Tree
Sleep, Minstrel, Sleep
Fides, Spes
The Tavern
In Media Vita
Antinous
Paradox
Proven?al Legend
Winter at Delphi
On Cyndus
The Namesake
Lament for Marsyas
White Birch in Wyoming
I Sought the Wood in Winter
Evening Song
Eurydice
The Encore
London Roses
The Night Express
Prairie Dawn
Aftermath
Thine Advocate
Poppies on Ludlow Castle
Sonnet
Thou Art the Pearl
From the Valley
I Have No House For Love to Shelter Him
The Poor Minstrel
Paris
Song
L'envoi

***

IN ROSE TIME

Oh this is the joy of the rose;
That it blows,
And goes.

Winter lasts a five-month
Spring-time stays but one;
Yellow blow the rye-fields
When the rose is done.
Pines are clad at Yuletide
When the birch is bare,
And the holly's greenest
In the frosty air.

Sorrow keeps a stone house
Builded grim and gray;
Pleasure hath a straw thatch
Hung with lanterns gay.
On her petty savings
Niggard Prudence thrives;
Passion, ere the moonset,
Bleeds a thousand lives.

Virtue hath a warm hearth?
Folly's dead and drowned;
Friendship hath her own when
Love is underground.


Ah! for me the madness
Of the spendthrift flower,
Burning myriad sunsets
In a single hour.

For this is the joy of the rose;
That it blows,
And goes.
... Read more

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Excerpt
The moving was over and done. Professor St. Peter was alone in the dismantled house where he had lived ever since his marriage, where he had worked out his career and brought up his two daughters. It was almost as ugly as it is possible for a house to be; square, three stories in height, painted the colour of ashes--the front porch just too narrow for comfort, with a slanting floor and sagging steps. As he walked slowly about the empty, echoing rooms on that bright September morning, the Professor regarded thoughtfully the needless inconveniences he had put up with for so long; the stairs that were too steep, the halls that were too cramped, the awkward oak mantles with thick round posts crowned by bumptious wooden balls, over green-tiled fire-places.
Certain wobbly stair treads, certain creaky boards in the upstairs hall, had made him wince many times a day for twenty-odd years--and they still creaked and wobbled. He had a deft hand with tools, he could easily have fixed them, but there were always so many things to fix, and there was not time enough to go round. He went into the kitchen, where he had carpentered under a succession of cooks, went up to the bath-room on the second floor, where there was only a painted tin tub; the taps were so old that no plumber could ever screw them tight enough to stop the drip, the window could only be coaxed up and down by wriggling, and the doors of the linen closet didn’t fit. He had sympathized with his daughters’ dissatisfaction, though he could never quite agree with them that the bath should be the most attractive room in the house. He had spent the happiest years of his youth in a house at Versailles where it distinctly was not, and he had known many charming people who had no bath at all.
However, as his wife said: “If your country has contributed one thing, at least, to civilization, why not have it?” Many a night, after blowing out his study lamp, he had leaped into that tub, clad in his pyjamas, to give it another coat of some one of the many paints that were advertised to behave like porcelain, and didn’t.

The Professor in pyjamas was not an unpleasant sight; for looks, the fewer clothes he had on, the better. Anything that clung to his body showed it to be built upon extremely good bones, with the slender hips and springy shoulders of a tireless swimmer. Though he was born on Lake Michigan, of mixed stock (Canadian French on one side, and American farmers on the other), St. Peter was commonly said to look like a Spaniard. That was possibly because he had been in Spain a good deal, and was an authority on certain phases of Spanish history. He had a long brown face, with an oval chin over which he wore a close trimmed Van-Dyke, like a tuft of shiny black fur. With this silky, very black hair, he had a tawny skin with gold lights in it, a hawk nose, and hawk-like eyes--brown and gold and green. They were set in ample cavities, with plenty of room to move about, under thick, curly, black eyebrows that turned up sharply at the outer ends, like military moustaches. His wicked-looking eyebrows made his students call him Mephistopheles--and there was no evading the searching eyes underneath them; eyes that in a flash could pick out a friend or an unusual stranger from a throng. They had lost none of their fire, though just now the man behind them was feeling a diminution of ardour.

His daughter Kathleen, who had done several successful studies of him in water-colour, had once said:--”The thing that really makes Papa handsome is the modelling of his head between the top of his ear and his crown; it is quite the best thing about him.”

Further Reading:
Written by Willa Cather and available from ADB Publishing
Sapphira and the Slave Girl
A Lost Lady (1923)
Lucy Gayheart (1935)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Shadows on the Rock (1931)
The Professor's House (1925)– This Book
Obscure Destinies
My Mortal Enemy
Not Under Forty ... Read more

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Featuring her wonderfully readable and often anthologized shortstories, the third and final volume (with "Early Novels and Stories"and "Later Novels") of the most comprehensive Cather edition availableanywhere. Includes the short-story collections "Youth and the BrightMedusa," "Obscure Destinies," and "The Old Beauty and Others," the novellas "Alexander's Bridge" and "My Mortal Enemy," occasional pieces, critical essays, andCather's only book of poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Willa Cather
I have several of Willa Cather's books.There are some duplicate stories in them, but no mind. She is a wonderful writer.

A great American writer in fine form
I was turned on to Ms. Cather by an English Professor in college. The Library of America makes her novels and stories available in a straightforward hardbound trio. I've purchased all three and am happy with them. If you are just wanting to try Cather out there are probably cheaper paperback options. However, if you are looking for a commentary/footnote-laden academic edition, this volume may be too light. Regardless, if you love Cather's novels and stories (and I do), these editions are a great buy: durable, well edited, and laid out in simple but elegant-looking fashion. As a Cather devotee, I'm very satisfied with this edition of her works. ... Read more

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Thirteen original essays by leading scholars cover the complete range of Cather's career, including most of her novels and short stories.The essays situate this major, enigmatic American novelist's work in a broad range of critical, cultural, and literary contexts. The introduction explores current trends in Cather scholarship and her place in contemporary culture. A detailed chronology and a guide to further reading complete the volume. ... Read more

Product Description
A Lost Lady was first published in 1923. It tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester who live in the Western town of Sweet Water, along the Transcontinental Railroad.

The novel is written in the third person, but is mostly written from the perspective of Niel Herbert, a young man who grows up in Sweet Water and witnesses the decline of Mrs. Forrester, for whom he feels very deeply, and also of the West itself from the idealized age of noble pioneers to the age of capitalist exploitation.

Excerpt:
Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along the Burlington railroad, which are so much greyer today than they were then, there was a house well known from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere.Well known, that is to say, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men who had to do with the railroad itself, or with one of the “land companies” which were its by-products.In those days it was enough to say of a man that he was “connected with the Burlington.”There were the directors, the general managers, vice-presidents, superintendents, whose names we all knew; and their younger brothers or nephews were auditors, freight agents, departmental assistants.Everyone “connected” with the Road, even the large cattle- and grain-shippers, had annual passes; they and their families rode about over the line a great deal.There were then two distinct social strata in the prairie States; the homesteaders and hand-workers who were there to make a living, and the bankers and gentlemen ranchers who came from the Atlantic seaboard to invest money and to “develop our great West,” as they used to tell us.

When the Burlington men were travelling back and forth on business not very urgent, they found it agreeable to drop off the express and spend a night in a pleasant house where their importance was delicately recognized; and no house was pleasanter than that of Captain Daniel Forrester, at Sweet Water.Captain Forrester was himself a railroad man, a contractor, who had built hundreds of miles of road for the Burlington,--over the sage brush and cattle country, and on up into the Black Hills.

The Forrester place, as every one called it, was not at all remarkable; the people who lived there made it seem much larger and finer than it was.The house stood on a low round hill, nearly a mile east of town; a white house with a wing, and sharp-sloping roofs to shed the snow.It was encircled by porches, too narrow for modern notions of comfort, supported by the fussy, fragile pillars of that time, when every honest stick of timber was tortured by the turning-lathe into something hideous.Stripped of its vines and denuded of its shrubbery, the house would probably have been ugly enough.It stood close into a fine cottonwood grove that threw sheltering arms to left and right and grew all down the hillside behind it.Thus placed on the hill, against its bristling grove, it was the first thing one saw on coming into Sweet Water by rail, and the last thing one saw on departing.

--------------------------------------------------------

Further Reading:
Written by Willa Cather and available from ADB Publishing
Sapphira and the Slave
A Lost Lady (1923) – This Book
Lucy Gayheart (1935)
Death Comes for the Archbishop(1927)
Shadows on the Rock (1931)
The Professor's House (1925)
Obscure Destinies
My Mortal Enemy
Not Under Forty
... Read more

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Introduction
Last summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling companion James Quayle Burden—Jim Burden, as we still call him in the West. He and I are old friends—we grew up together in the same Nebraska town—and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said. ... Read more

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CLAUDE WHEELER opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed. "Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car." "What for?"
"Why, aren't we going to the circus today?"
"Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light which was beginning to come through the curtainless windows.
Claude rose and dressed,- a simple operation which took very little time. He crept down two nights of stairs, feeling his way in the dusk, his red hair standing up in peaks, like a cock's comb. He went through the kitchen into the adjoining washroom, which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had washed before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline water had not dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to the kitchen, took Mahailey's tin basin, douse

Table of Contents

Book I On Lovely Creek I; Book II Enid 117; Book III Sunrise on the Prairie 201; Book IV The Voyage of the Anchises 267; Book V "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On" 323

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more

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This collection contains the most celebrated works of Willa Cather:

My Antonia
O Pioneers
One of Ours
Alexander's Bridge
Song of the Lark
Youth and the Bright Medusa
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories

Includes and active table of contents. ... Read more

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"A Singer's Romance", "The Sentimentality of William Tavener", "The Count of Crow's Nest", "A Resurrection", "The Prodigies" and "Nanette: An Aside" are told with extraordinary human insight. (Three CDs). ... Read more

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As the train neared Tarrytown, Imogen 'Villard
began to wonder why she had consented to be
one of Flavia's house party at all. She had
not felt enthusiastic about it since leaving the city,
and was experiencing a prolonged ebb of purpose,
a current of chilling indecision, under which she
vainly sought for the motive which had induced
her to accept Flavia's invitation.
Perhaps it was a vague curiosity to see Flavia's
husband, who had been the magician of her
childhood and the hero of innumerable Arabian
fairy tales. Perhaps it was a desire to see M.
Roux, whom Flavia had announced as the especial
attraction of the occasion. Perhaps it was a
wish to study that remarkable woman in her own
setting.
Imogen admitted a mild curiosity concerning
Flavia. She was in the habit of taking people
rather seriously, but SOlnehow found it iID

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; r&OB; FLAVIA AND HER ARTISTS • Il1o • • • • • • • 1; 65; 85; · III; THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL ; THE GARDEN LODGE • •; •• A DEATH IN THE DESERT'~; THE MARRIAGE OF PIL£DRA; A WAGNER 1fATINEE ; PAUL'S CASE • • • •; ; ; ; ; • • Il1o • · 155; • It , • • 198; • • • • • 211

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurate ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Cather's Early Work
"The Troll Garden" by Willa Cather contains some of her earliest writing.She had published a collection of poetry titled "April Twilights" a couple of years earlier, and there are a couple of earlier short stories which are not included in this collection, but other than that this is the earliest example of her writing."The Troll Garden" includes seven stories which deal with the subject of art, in some way or another.

"Flavia and Her Artists" - This story was originally published in this collection. Flavia likes to put herself at the center of society by inviting noteworthy people to her house parties, though her husband, Arthur, doesn't fit in with them.In this case, it is a group which consists of several noteworthy people, including M. Roux, a novelist.It also includesImogen Willard, the narrator of the story, who remembers Flavia's husband from her childhood.M. Roux leaves much earlier than the other guests, and when an article he writes satirizes Flavia mercilessly, Imogen tries to keep it from Arthur, but he reads it and then destroys it so that Flavia will not read it.The other guests are aware of it though, and when the subject of M. Roux comes up, Imogen believes that she notices a general agreement with what he had done.Arthur does not put up with their falseness though, and does to M. Roux in front of the guests what M. Roux had done to Flavia.When many of the guests decide to leave, Flavia mistakenly believes that it is her husband who has acted improperly.

"The Sculptor's Funeral" - This story was originally published in McClure's Magazine in January of 1905.When Harvey Merrick's body returns for burial to the small town in Kansas where he grew up, the locals make fun of him, even though he was a famed sculptor.Only two people appear to truly grieve the loss, his student Henry Steavens, and his old friend, Jim Laird, who finally hears enough of the other's attacks on Harvey, and he lets them know exactly how much better Harvey was than any of them.

"'A Death in the Desert'" - This story was originally published in "Scribner's" in January of 1903.This story centers on Everett Hilgarde, a man who is often mistaken for his brother Adriance, who is a famous composer.On a trip to Wyoming, he is surprised to see Katharine Gaylord, a singer who used to work with his brother, and who he knew and admired when he was much younger.They start to meet regularly, and he learns that she is fatally ill.He lets Adriance know of her situation, and his brother sends her a letter and his most recent composition.

"The Garden Lodge" - Caronline Noble used to be a musician, and recently entertained a famous tenor, Raymond d'Esquerre.His visit has reminded her of her days when she was a musician, and less practical.She at first is opposed to her husband wanting to tear down the garden lodge where she spent time with Raymond d'Esquerre, but after reflection and a night's sleep, she returns to the more practical world which has become her life after music.

"The Marriage of Phaedra" - The narrator, MacMaster, sets out to write the biography of Hugh Treffinger, a painter who has just passed away.He becomes involved in the dealing with his unfinished work, "The Marriage of Phaedra".Hugh Treffinger's valet and assistant, James, believes that Hugh did not want it to be sold, as it was unfinished, but an art dealer from Melbourne has offered Hugh's wife a lot of money for it.

"A Wagner Matinee" - First published in "Everybody's Magazine" in February of 1904, this story is a wonderful story about a young man in Boston (Clark) who learns that his aunt from Nebraska is coming to visit.His aunt Georgiana lived in Boston a long time ago, and she loved music, so he arranges to take her to a concert.When she arrives, she is much changed and he is worried about how she will react to the event, as she seems to have lost all of what she once was.As the concert goes on, he notices more and more how it seems to be reaching her.A very touching story, and one of my favourites in this collection.

"Paul's Case" - This story was first published in McClure's Magazine in May of 1905.This story starts in Pittsburgh, and opens with Paul meeting with the Principal of his school and the teachers that had him suspended.Paul's troubles don't end there, as he is drawn to the performing arts, ushering at Carnegie Hall, but his father isn't pleased with Paul's attitude, so he puts him to work at his company, while forcing him to give up his job at Carnegie Hall.Paul steals and runs away to New York to escape the life he hates.He watches the papers for signs that they know where he is, and when he sees them he is afraid of what they will do.He is resolved in what to do, and carries out his plan.This is an interesting story, and the comparison between flowers in winter and Paul's life is a good one.

"The Troll Garden" is a relatively short collection of just seven stories, but is a very good collection, brought together by a common theme of the arts.Cather is best known for her pioneer type stories, and there is a taste of that in a few of the stories here, but for the most part these stories don't fit that particular style.A very good start to her career in literature.

The Troll Garden by Willa Cather
The Troll Garden by Willa Cather. Collection of short stories. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

This was Willa Cather's first published book which came out in 1905. If you're looking for some interesting reading, you should give these stories a try.

Wholly Muses
This was Willa Cather's first published book which came out in 1905.I am singularly unqualified to comment on her entire opus, having read only one other book, and that when I was in grade school.The seven stories here certainly smack of Victorian era romanticism, that often dark and tragic force, but for all that most of them will strike you as sensitive, discerning, and very apt as far as human nature is concerned.The themes vary, but all center around people in the arts or those who lead, as Cather puts it, "tributary lives", that is, they pay homage to the arts.Perhaps that homage is a bit too earnest, a bit too cloying, for 21st century readers, or perhaps, as a first time writer, she overstated her case sometimes.Another common theme is the incomprehension of small town America towards artistically-inclined people. Thus, one escapes from the inanities of Podunk, or sinks in the mires thereof.Henry James later emphasized the theme of "old Europe vs new America" in many of his novels---Cather frequently takes up a similar strand, concentrating more on the difference between 'sophisticated East Coast" and "crude Center".

"Flavia and Her Artists" may be the best story here---it is vivid and unlike some others, has a sharp ending.A social butterfly with cultural pretensions, plenty of money, and a tolerant, but somewhat philistine husband, tries to "catch" Manhattan artists,composers, dancers, and the like for her weekend parties and soirees at Tarrytown, NY.An invited French writer later publishes a mocking, satirical piece on the butterfly, but the husband and narrator hide the fact from the naive socialite.The upshot is that the husband takes it on the chin for no reason.In "The Sculptor's Funeral" a Kansas town can't fathom anyone different.We listen to their hickish, blind soliloquies of a town boy who went East to follow his art, but died.Only a local drunken lawyer (once the sculptor's classmate) and a horrified New England visitor understand."The Garden Lodge" presents with considerable sensitivity an immensely practical woman who worked her way out of a ne'er do well, totally impractical family and married a rich, successful man.Now she wrestles for one night with a secret love which could 'bust everything wide open'.What's her choice ? There are four other stories as well, one, "The Marriage of Phaedra" I thought did not match up to the rest, perhaps because it is laid in England and Cather seems much better at American personalities.Sex, violence, and power do not play even a marginal role in Cather's writing; much more dreams, pretensions, failed loves and sunken ambitions.They are not modern tales, or at least, not in the modern style.But, if you're looking for some interesting reading, you could give these stories of a vanished world a try.

Cather's early stories, including four later revised
Cather's first book of fiction gathers seven stories, four of which were initially published in magazines and later revised for inclusion in the 1920 eight-story collection "Youth and the Bright Medusa" (which is worth reading on its own). Collectively, the stories in "The Troll Garden" show the young Cather in the throes of an overtly Jamesian phase, with perfunctory nods to her later rural and Nebraskan subjects. While all are united by the theme of artistic genius and influence, none are about the artists themselves. Instead, they relate the dreams and delusions of the relatives, friends, hangers-on, and wannabes who associate with artists and either idolize or scorn them.

The two most well-known stories are "The Sculptor's Funeral" and "Paul's Case," both of which were left largely unchanged for their later versions and in Cather's 1937 edition of collected works. The first describes rural neighbors who vent their lack of appreciation for the achievements of an internationally famous sculptor when his corpse is shipped to his hometown for burial; "Where the old man made his mistake was in sending the boy East to school" is the verdict of one of the town's inhabitants. "Paul's Case" concerns a school-age boy whose flightiness and irresponsibility is exacerbated by the fanciful extravagances represented on the stage and by the glittering allure of celebrity lifestyle.

Both ""A Death in the Desert" and "A Wagner Matinee" were heavily revised for their later publications. The first of these, filled with literary allusions and oddly detached from its Wyoming setting, benefited from the later changes, which tightened both the prose and the emotional impact. Its heroine is an opera singer dying of tuberculosis who recalls a lost love--a brilliant composer--in the unexpected appearance of his younger brother, whose own career never escapes the shadow of his sibling's renown. The 1905 version of "A Wagner Matinee," in contrast, is far superior to its later incarnations, in which Cather had softened beyond recognition her portrait of a Bostonian woman transplanted to Nebraska who returns back East after thirty years of relentless drudgery. Although Cather's family regarded the story as a mocking and insulting caricature of her own aunt, the earlier depiction's bite and its leanness are what make it so powerful.

The three stories that appear exclusively in this collection are "Flavia and Her Artists," "The Marriage of Phaedra," and "The Garden Lodge." The first of these is the best; it concerns a society matron playing hostess to a gaggle of artists who take advantage of her hospitality but who can barely tolerate her pretensions. The story turns when a member of the company broadcasts his scorn for Flavia in a withering profile published by a local newspaper.

Many of these pieces, in sum, should be read not simply for insights into the early development of a celebrated author; they are near-masterpieces in their own right. In them one can see a uniquely constructed literary bridge between the Eurocentrism of Henry James and the American realism of Sinclair Lewis. ... Read more

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Not In Sisterhood investigates an important transitional moment in the history of U.S. women's writing : the uneasy shift from the 19th-century model of the "lady author" to some new but undefined alternative. The careers of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, together with that of their friend and peer Zona Gale, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, reveal several different strategies for negotiating this unknown terrain. While Gale made her feminist politics an integral part of her successful novels and plays, Wharton and Cather publicly denied any interest in gender issues or social reforms. Not in Sisterhood shows how the complex intersections of literary and social politics that shaped the world of Wharton, Cather, and Gale are still at work in today's feminist reconstructions of literary history.
... Read more

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In this innovative and wide-ranging book, Byatt and the psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre bring their different sensibilities to bear on six novels they have read and loved: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Bronte's Villette, George Elliot's Daniel Deronda, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Iris Murdoch's An Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and, at times, transforms their lives. Imagining Characters is indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Eavesdropping on Great Conversations
The happiest moments of a liberal arts education usually take place late in the evening in a dormitory lounge or in a local bistro over several cups of coffee.They're conversations, often between two similarly minded people, that explore a favorite subject.Browsing through Imagining Characters is like lingering in a seat at the next table.

The works selected are an English major's hit list of mainly nineteenth century women's novels.Byatt and Sodre bring their experience as a fiction writer and a clinical psychologist, respectively, to their understandings and develop complementary insights rather than rigorous debates.

This isn't everyone's cup of java.The reader who enjoys this volume probably relishes at least half of the novels discussed, smiles at being called a feminist, and prefers discussion to formal criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
Willa Cather?s My Antonia, a nostalgic novel about an earlier America, portrays the harmonies and disharmonies of the human world and the world of nature. This novel gathers together some of the best criticism available on the text, which covers such elements within the text as hope and memory, the American Dream, sex, and more.

The title, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Willa Cather’s My Antonia through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics.This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Willa Cather, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Good Book
Although this book wasn't what I had expected, it was a good book. The book had wonderful details of the setting and all the characters included. Will read again.

Cather's last novel is solid return to virginia
Willa Catherlived in Virginia until sometime between the ages of 9and 10 but did not write about thoman who is slightly biwe state until her last novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The novel is not one ter about her masterpieces but is still quite good. The potrayal of Sapphira an utterly self asorbed woman who is nevertotally comfortable about her move to a backwoods part of the state She becomes jealous of Nancy one of her slaves when her husband shows affection for her and the arrival of her rakish nephew complicates things. This is an interesting non stereotypical view of slavery and is well written stylistically. Avery good novel which I strongly recommend

Generates Thoughtful Contemplation
As I was reading this book (which is thought provoking) I also was thinking thoughts similar to the previous reviewer, i.e., would the black people in the book really think this way in real life; (Example, some of the slaves would talk about the other slaves calling them "no count niggers".One of the slaves was offered freedom and a job in Pennsylvania but turned it down saying he wanted to stay where he was).I assume there were all kinds.All kinds of slave owners and all kinds of slaves.Perhaps some of what the author writes was true for some people but not true for others.

I really find it interesting that The "Master" (Mr. Henry Colbert) and his daughter (Mrs. Blake) would go to such trouble to make sure that Nancy (the slave girl) did not come to any sexual harm by Mr. Colbert's nephew Martin.Would this have really happened or would, in most cases, people in their position have turned a blind eye?Would a slave actually have felt comfortable going to a white person about this trouble?

I found it a bit hard to digest that the slaves were so ultimately loyal and simple and that the slave owners were to some extent so lenient.Was this a truthful depiction based on some facts the author uncovered or were theses all-false assumptions that she accepted as truth?

Of course I am reading this with all of the influences of a 2003 consciousness.

I think this book is perhaps showing a side to slavery that maybe did exist, just perhaps not on a widespread basis.I would hope the author did some type of research to substantiate what she wrote.It does make one contemplate...

Review written by a black person.

Interesting look at an outdated view of slavery
Having never read a novel by Willa Cather, but only knowing of her work by it's reputation, I was anxious to read something of hers when our book club chose her as an author. Not wanting to pick something everyone had read I picked "Sapphira..". While the lead character of Sapphira was an interesting psychological study in narcisistic behavior in the face of sexual and physical repression, I found the depiction of African Americans, and slavery as a whole, to be unrealistic and naive. While there is an obligatory anti-slavery sentiment in the book, it is under-cut by the impression that the slaves are basically simple, happy folk, who are only upset when they are mis-understood, have somehow displeased thier owners, or are the objects of sexual predators. While the young slave girl, Nancy, does escape and become something of a success (as a domestic) in Canada, that part of her life is never detailed, and is only briefly mentioned. It is evident from the characterization of the strongest Black characters that the author subscribed to the liberal ideal of race relations found during her time (wise Whites can lead Blacks out of ignorance if only Blacks will let themselves be lead). This can be seen by Nancy's mother Till, and her former relationship with an English housekeeper, the Miller and his head Millhand who refuses to be freed, and Nancy who turns to Sapphira's daughter Rachel for advice and finally escape. This book is best read for the insights it can give us into the attitudes towards race, and slavery, fostered during the first half of the century soon past, rather then anything resembling historical accuracy. ... Read more