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First published in 1918, My Ántonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman’s life on the hardscrabble Nebraska plains. Together here with O Pioneers!, a classic American tale of pioneer life and the transformation of the frontier, this volume of Willa Cather’s works captures a time, a place, and a spirit that are part of our national heritage.

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This is the first biography of Willa Cather to explore thoroughly the connections between her artistic and her psychological growth. O'Brien makes full use of biographical and literary materials: Cather's personal and professional correspondence, photographs, and the early short stories as well as the major fiction. Dealing openly and seriously with Cather's lesbianism, the book explores the importance of female friendships in Cather's life and work and assesses the impact that her need to conceal her sexual identity had on the creative process. Concentrating on Cather's childhood, adolescence, young womanhood, and lengthy apprenticeship, O'Brien paints the portrait of the artist as a young woman and reveals the complex interplay between Willa Cather's life and her work. In a new Preface, O'Brien sets the book in its historical context.

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Moving the focus from the strong female characters that American writer Cather (1873-1947) is best known for, Anders looks at the male friendships she portrays, ranging from the social to the sexual. He argues that she worked in the familiar tradition of friendship literature inspired by classical and Christian texts, and also borrowed from a homosexual legacy that is a distinct subset of established literary traditions. ... Read more

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When a superb actress such as Marian Seldes interprets the stirring words of an author such as Willa Cather, new vistas of understanding open. This special performance, produced by Victoria, features dramatic readings from O'Pioneers!, My Antonia, Lucy Gayheart, and other writings interwoven with biographical notes, and an extraordinary tribute by Truman Capote. This collection includes a review of Henry James' The Tragic Muse, and her essay "Light on Adobe Walls" and gives listeners insight into the private character of writer Willa Cather. 1 cassette. ... Read more

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Text for Review Box: The life and writings of Willa Cather, one of America's leading writers of the early 20th century, are examined in this book aimed at young adult readers. Includes notes, bibliography, and chronology. ... Read more

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an excerpt from the beginning:

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Books for All Kinds of Readers. ReadHowYouWant offers the widest selection of on-demand, accessible format editions on the market to-day. Our 7 different sizes of EasyRead are optimized by increasing the font size and spacing between the words and the letters. We partner with leading publishers around the globe. Our goal is to have accessible editions simultaneously released with publishers' new books so that all readers can have access to the books they want to read. To find more books in your format visit www.readhowyouwant.com ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Willa Cather's New York
There is something almost obsessive about this collection of essays on Cather's engagement with New York City.These authors have not only visited (almost fetishized) every geographical place associated with Cather, but they have painstakingly combed her work for every possible reference to New York.This collection is an attempt to "rescue" Cather from being known in literary history as "only" a regionalist writer.While I admire the thorough scholarship that went into this work, I feel on the whole that this collection undermines the excellent work that feminist literary critics have done on American women regionalists like Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, etc.The implication behind Skaggs et al's work is that regionalist writing, rather than an important development in American realism, is of lesser value and that Cather is "better" than that.

Diverse and exceptionally well written essays
Willa Cather's New York: New Essays On Cather In The City is a fascinating and informative collection of essays offering a wide-ranging spectrum of observations on how the pace and diversity of New York City life and its literary community affected, influenced, and was celebrated by Cather's perceptions both in her writing and in her life. The diverse and exceptionally well written essays are arranged in to four major sections: Geographical City and Home Town; Art Capital of the World; City Contacts and Literary Connections; and Urban Perspectives. These informative commentaries are enhanced for the reader with twenty-four illustrations, a list of contributors, and an index. Willa Cather's New York is enthusiastically recommended reading for students of her work and the New York literary establishment of the early decades of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Previous biographies of Willa Cather have either recycledthe traditional view of a writer detached from social issues whosework supported a wholesome view of a vanished America, or they havefocused solely on revelations about her private life. Challengingthese narrow interpretations, Janis P. Stout presents a Cather whoselife and quietly modernist work fully reflected the artistic andcultural tensions of her day.

A product of the South--she was born in Virginia--Cather went westwith her family at an early age, a participant in the aspirations ofManifest Destiny. Known for her celebrations of immigrants on theprairie, she in fact shared many of the ethnic suspicions of hercontemporaries. Loved by a popular audience for her pieties of familyand religion, she was in her youth a freethinker who resistedtraditional patterns for women's lives, cutting her hair like a boy'sand dressing in men's clothing. Seen by critics since the 1930s as apractitioner of an escapist formalism, she was, in Stout's view,profoundly ambivalent about most of the important questions shefaced. Cather structured her writing to control her uncertainty andproject a serenity she did not in fact feel.

Cather has at times been viewed as a writer preoccupied with the pastwhose literary project had little to do with the intellectual currentsof her time. On the contrary, Stout argues, Cather was a fullparticipant in the doubts and conflicts of twentieth-centurymodernity. Only in recoil from her distress at these conflicts did sheturn to overt celebrations of the past and construct a retiring,crotchety persona.

The Cather that emerges from Stout's treatment is a modernistconservative in the mold of T. S. Eliot, though more responsive to hertime and simultaneously less assured in her pronouncements. Cather'ssexuality, too, is more complicated in Stout's version than previousbiographers have allowed. Willa Cather: The Writer and Her Worldpresents a woman and an artist who fully exemplifies the ambivalence,the foreboding, and above all the complexity that we associate withthe twentieth-century mind. ... Read more

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A sensitive analysis and a compelling read
I was shocked to see this book -- my favorite analysis of Cather's life, letters, and fiction -- had received only one star from another reviewer. Though it turns out the reviewer was actually unhappy with the advertising and not the text itself, I want to say that Janis Stout's brilliant book, a beautifully lucid and enjoyable read, is also deceptively complex and rich, like Cather's own fiction.

Correction
(The 1 star is only to enable me to post this note.) I'm writing to point out that the quote you have from The Washington Post Book World by Louis Rubin is from his review of an earlier Stout book, "Katherine Anne Porter." Please correct it. Marie Arana, Editor, The Washington Post Book World ... Read more

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Willa Cather's elegiac tales of the pioneer experience on the American frontier continue to captivate new generations of readers. Written especially for students, this critical introduction offers insightful yet accessible criticism of Cather's most widely read novels. A full chapter examines each work, with full discussions of character development, thematic concerns, plot, critical reception, and historical contexts. Students will find this book a valuable guide to this great American author.

The volume covers such enduring works as Alexander's Bridge, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My D'Antonia, The Professor's House, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Shadows on the Rock.

Each chapter is devoted to an individual novel and provides a full discussion of character development, thematic concerns, and plot structure. The introduction to each novel traces its genesis and its critical reception at the time of publication. The historical context sections place Cather's vision of the pioneer spirit and achievement within the context of a rapidly changing America that was in the process of abandoning its traditional values and thus risking its source of greatness. Students will find this book a valuable guide to Cather's works.

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A biography of the American author Willa Cather, emphasizing her youth and early career but covering all of her life. ... Read more