Willa Cather
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Willa Sibert Cather (; born Wilella Sibert Cather; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
, including ''
O Pioneers! O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...
'', '' The Song of the Lark'', and ''
My Ántonia ''My Ántonia'' ( ) is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigra ...
''. In 1923, she was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
for ''
One of Ours ''One of Ours'' is a 1922 novel by Willa Cather that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an in ...
'', a novel set during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Willa Cather and her family moved from Virginia to Webster County, Nebraska, when she was nine years old. The family later settled in the town of Red Cloud. Shortly after graduating from the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Univers ...
, Cather moved to
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on
Grand Manan Grand Manan is a Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy. Grand Manan is also the name of an incorporated village, which includes the main island and all of its adjacent islands, except White Head Island. It is governed as a village and is part of t ...
Island, New Brunswick. She spent the last 39 years of her life with her domestic partner, Edith Lewis, before being diagnosed with breast cancer and dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried beside Lewis in a
Jaffrey, New Hampshire Jaffrey is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,320 at the 2020 census. The main village in town, where 3,058 people resided at the 2020 census, is defined as the Jaffrey census-designated place (CDP) a ...
plot. Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A
sense of place The term sense of place has been used in many different ways. It is a multidimensional, complex construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings. It is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some ...
is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community.


Early life and education

Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near
Winchester, Virginia Winchester is the most north western independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Frederick County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Winchester wit ...
. Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather. The Cather family originated in Wales, the name deriving from
Cadair Idris Cadair Idris or Cader Idris is a mountain in the Meirionnydd area of Gwynedd, Wales. It lies at the southern end of the Snowdonia National Park near the town of Dolgellau. The peak, which is one of the most popular in Wales for walkers and h ...
, a Gwynedd mountain. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak, a former school teacher. By the time Cather turned twelve months old, the family had moved to
Willow Shade Willow Shade, also known as the Willa Cather House, is a historic home located near Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia. The house was built in 1851, and is a two-story, five-bay-by-three-bay, rectangular brick dwelling in a vernacular Late ...
, a
Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...
-style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents. Mary Cather had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. Cather was closer to her brothers than to her sisters whom, according to biographer
Hermione Lee Dame Hermione Lee, (born 29 February 1948) is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Pr ...
, she "seems not to have liked very much." At the urging of Charles Cather's parents, the family moved to
Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...
in 1883 when Willa was nine years old. The farmland appealed to Charles' father, and the family wished to escape the
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
outbreaks that were rampant in Virginia. Willa's father tried his hand at farming for eighteen months, then moved the family into the town of
Red Cloud Red Cloud ( lkt, Maȟpíya Lúta, italic=no) (born 1822 – December 10, 1909) was a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1868 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents whom the United States Army faced in the western ...
, where he opened a real estate and insurance business, and the children attended school for the first time. Some of Cather's earliest work was first published in the ''Red Cloud Chief,'' the city's local paper, and Cather read widely, having made friends with a Jewish couple, the Wieners, who offered her free access to their extensive library in Red Cloud. At the same time, she made house calls with the local physician and decided to become a surgeon. For a short while, she signed her name as William, but this was quickly abandoned for Willa instead. In 1890, at the age of sixteen, Cather graduated from Red Cloud High School. She moved to
Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United Sta ...
to enroll at the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Univers ...
. In her first year, her essay on
Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
was published in the ''
Nebraska State Journal The ''Lincoln Journal Star'' is an American daily newspaper that serves Lincoln, Nebraska, the state capital and home of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Nebraska. It is the most widely read newspaper in Lincoln and has t ...
'' without her knowledge. After this, she published columns for $1 apiece, saying that seeing her words printed on the page had "a kind of hypnotic effect", pushing her to continue writing. After this experience, she became a regular contributor to the ''Journal''. In addition to her work with the local paper, Cather served as the main editor of '' The Hesperian'', the university's student newspaper, and became a writer for the ''Lincoln Courier''. While at the university, she learned mathematics from and was befriended by John J. Pershing, who later became General of the Armies and, like Cather, earned a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. She changed her plans from studying science to become a physician, instead graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1895. Cather's time in Nebraska, still considered a frontier state, was a formative experience for her: She was moved by the dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the prairie, and the various cultures of the immigrant and Native American families in the area.


Life and career

In 1896, Cather was hired to write for a women's magazine, ''
Home Monthly ''Home Monthly'' was a monthly women's magazine published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the late 19th century. When ''Home Monthly'' was established in 1896, it hired Willa Cather as the managing editor of the magazine. Cather oversaw the public ...
'', and moved to
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
. There, she wrote journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetry. A year later, after the magazine was sold, she became a telegraph editor and critic for the '' Pittsburgh Leader'' and frequently contributed poetry and short fiction to ''The Library'', another local publication. In Pittsburgh, she taught Latin, algebra, and English composition at Central High School for one year; she then taught English and Latin at
Allegheny High School The Allegheny High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a building from 1904. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Notable graduates include William N. Robson, award-winning writer, director, and producer from the ...
, where she came to head the English department. Shortly after moving to Pittsburgh, Cather wrote short stories, including publishing " Tommy, the Unsentimental" in the ''Home Monthly'', about a Nebraskan girl with a masculine name who looks like a boy and saves her father's bank business. Janis P. Stout calls this story one of several Cather works that "demonstrate the speciousness of rigid gender roles and give favorable treatment to characters who undermine conventions." Her first book, a collection of poetry called ''April Twilights'', was published in 1903. Shortly after this, in 1905, Cather's first collection of short stories, '' The Troll Garden'', was published. It contained some of her most famous stories, including "
A Wagner Matinee "A Wagner Matinee" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in ''Everybody's Magazine'' in February 1904.Woodress, James. ''Willa Cather: A Literary Life''. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987, p. 172 In 1906, it appeared i ...
", "
The Sculptor's Funeral "The Sculptor's Funeral" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in ''McClure's'' in January 1905. Plot summary In the fictional small town of Sand City, Kansas, the body of Harvey Merrick, a famed sculptor, is brought back to ...
", and "
Paul's Case "Paul's Case" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in ''McClure's Magazine'' in 1905 under the title "Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament", which was later shortened. It also appeared in a collection of Cather's stories, '' T ...
". After Cather was offered an editorial position at ''
McClure's ''McClure's'' or ''McClure's Magazine'' (1893–1929) was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism ( investigative, wa ...
Magazine'' in 1906, she moved to New York City. During her first year at ''McClure's'', the newspaper published a critical series of articles of the religious leader
Mary Baker Eddy Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was an American religious leader and author who founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in New England in 1879. She also founded ''The Christian Science Monitor'', a Pulitzer Prize-winning se ...
, crediting freelance journalist Georgine Milmine as the author. Cather contributed to the series, but there has been some debate as to how much. Milmine had performed copious amounts of research, but she did not have the resources to produce a manuscript independently, and ''McClure's'' employed Cather and a few other editors including Burton J. Hendrick to assist her. This biography was serialized in ''McClure's'' over the next eighteen months and then published in book form. ''McClure's'' also serialized Cather's first novel, '' Alexander's Bridge'' (1912). While most reviews were favorable, such as ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' calling the writing "deft and skillful", Cather herself soon saw the novel as weak and shallow. Cather followed ''Alexander's Bridge'' with her three novels set in the Great Plains, which eventually became both popular and critical successes: ''
O Pioneers! O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...
'' (1913), '' The Song of the Lark'' (1915), and ''
My Ántonia ''My Ántonia'' ( ) is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigra ...
'' (1918), which are—taken together—sometimes referred to as her "Prairie Trilogy". It is this succession of plains-based novels for which Cather was celebrated for her use of plainspoken language about ordinary people.
Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
, for example, praised her work for making Nebraska available to the wider world for the first time. After writing ''
The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby ...
'',
F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
lamented that it was a failure in comparison to ''My Ántonia''.


1920s

As late as 1920, Cather became dissatisfied with the performance of her publisher,
Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
, which devoted an advertising budget of only $300 to ''My Ántonia'', and refused to pay for all the illustrations she commissioned for the book from Władysław T. Benda. What's more, the physical quality of the books was poor. That year, she turned to the young publishing house,
Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
, which had a reputation for supporting its authors through advertising campaigns. She also liked the look of its books and had been impressed with its edition of ''
Green Mansions ''Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest'' (1904) is an exotic romance by William Henry Hudson about a traveller to the Guyana jungle of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest-dwelling girl named Rima. The principa ...
'' by
William Henry Hudson William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) – known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson – was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. Life Hudson was the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine (), ...
. She so enjoyed their style that all her Knopf books of the 1920s—save for one printing of her short story collection ''
Youth and the Bright Medusa ''Youth and the Bright Medusa'' is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, '' The Troll Garden''. Contents This collection contains the following stories: * "Coming, Ap ...
''—matched in design on their second and subsequent printings. By this time, Cather was firmly established as a major
American writer American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry ...
, receiving the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
in 1923 for her World War I-based novel, ''
One of Ours ''One of Ours'' is a 1922 novel by Willa Cather that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an in ...
''. She followed this up with the popular ''
Death Comes for the Archbishop ''Death Comes for the Archbishop'' is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory. The novel's U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 20 ...
'' in 1927, selling 86,500 copies in just two years, and which has been included on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century. Two of her three other novels of the decade—''
A Lost Lady ''A Lost Lady'' is a 1923 novel by American writer Willa Cather. 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. Throughout the st ...
'' and '' The Professor's House''—elevated her literary status dramatically. She was invited to give several hundred lectures to the public, earned significant royalties, and sold the movie rights to ''A Lost Lady''. Her other novel of the decade, the 1926 ''
My Mortal Enemy ''My Mortal Enemy'' is the eighth novel by American author Willa Cather. It was first published in 1926. Plot summary Myra and her husband Oswald return to their fictional hometown of Parthia, Illinois, to visit their relatives. Nellie and Aunt ...
'', received no widespread acclaim—and in fact, neither she nor her partner, Edith Lewis, made significant mention of it later in their lives. Despite her success, she was the subject of much criticism, particularly surrounding ''One of Ours''. Her close friend,
Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant (April 23, 1881 – January 26, 1965) was an American journalist and writer.ather'sidealized war vision ... and my own stark impressions of war as ''lived''." Similarly,
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
took issue with her portrayal of war, writing in a 1923 letter: "Wasn’t he novel’slast scene in the lines wonderful? Do you know where it came from? The battle scene in '' Birth of a Nation''. I identified episode after episode, Catherized. Poor woman, she had to get her war experience somewhere."


1930s

By the 1930s, an increasingly large share of critics began to dismiss her as overly romantic and nostalgic, unable to grapple with contemporary issues:
Granville Hicks Granville Hicks (September 9, 1901 – June 18, 1982) was an American Marxist and, later, anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor. Early life Granville Hicks was born September 9, 1901, in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Frank Stev ...
, for instance, charged Cather with escaping into an idealized past to avoid confronting them. And it was particularly in the context of the hardships of the Great Depression in which her work was seen as lacking social relevance. Similarly, critics—and Cather herself—were disappointed when her novel ''A Lost Lady'' was made into a film; the film had little resemblance to the novel. Cather's lifelong conservative politics, appealing to critics such as Mencken,
Randolph Bourne Randolph Silliman Bourne (; May 30, 1886 – December 22, 1918) was a progressive writer and intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University. He is considered to be a spokesman for the young radicals living du ...
, and
Carl Van Doren Carl Clinton Van Doren (September 10, 1885 – July 18, 1950) was an American critic and biographer. He was the brother of critic and teacher Mark Van Doren and the uncle of Charles Van Doren. He won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autob ...
, soured her reputation with younger, often left-leaning critics like Hicks and
Edmund Wilson Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
. Despite this critical opposition to her work, Cather remained a popular writer whose novels and short story collections continued to sell well; in 1931 '' Shadows on the Rock'' was the most widely read novel in the United States, and ''
Lucy Gayheart ''Lucy Gayheart'' is Willa Cather's eleventh novel. It was published in 1935. The novel revolves round the eponymous character, Lucy Gayheart, a young girl from the fictional town of Haverford, Nebraska, located near the Platte River. History So ...
'' became a bestseller in 1935. While Cather made her last trip to Red Cloud in 1931 for a family gathering after her mother's death, she stayed in touch with her Red Cloud friends and sent money to Annie Pavelka and other families during the Depression years. In 1932, Cather published ''
Obscure Destinies ''Obscure Destinies'' is a collection of three short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1932. Each story deals with the death of a central character and asks how the ordinary lives of these characters can be valued and how "beauty was found or ...
'', her final collection of short fiction, which contained " Neighbour Rosicky", one of her most highly regarded stories. That same summer, she moved into a new apartment on
Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...
with Edith Lewis, and during a visit on Grand Manan, she probably began working on her next novel, ''Lucy Gayheart''. Cather suffered two devastating losses in 1938. In June, her favorite brother, Douglass, died of a heart attack. Cather was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. Four months later, Isabelle McClung died. Cather and McClung had lived together when Cather first arrived in Pittsburgh, and while McClung eventually married and moved with her husband to Toronto, the two women remained devoted friends. Cather wrote that Isabelle was the person for whom she wrote all her books.


Final years

During the summer of 1940, Cather and Lewis went to Grand Manan for the last time, and Cather finished her final novel, ''
Sapphira and the Slave Girl ''Sapphira and the Slave Girl'' is Willa Cather's last novel, published in 1940. It is the story of Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a bitter white woman, who becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful young slave. The book balances an a ...
'', a book much darker in tone and subject matter than her previous works. While Sapphira is understood by readers as lacking a moral sense and failing to evoke empathy, the novel was a great critical and commercial success, with an advance printing of 25,000 copies. It was then adopted by the
Book of the Month Club Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ...
, which bought more than 200,000 copies. Her final story, "
The Best Years ''The Best Years'' is a Canadian drama television series about a group of college students at Charles University, a fictional Ivy League school in Boston, Massachusetts. It stars Charity Shea as Samantha Best, an orphan who lived in the foster ...
", intended as a gift for her brother, was retrospective. It contained images or "keepsakes" from each of her twelve published novels and the short stories in ''Obscure Destinies''. Although an inflamed tendon in her hand hampered her writing, Cather managed to finish a substantial part of a novel set in
Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...
, France. She had titled it '' Hard Punishments'' and placed it in the 14th century during the reign of
Antipope Benedict XIV Benedict XIV was the name used by two closely related minor antipopes of the 15th century. The first, Bernard Garnier became antipope in 1424 and died c. 1429. The second, Jean Carrier, became antipope c. 1430 and apparently left office, whethe ...
. She was elected a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 1943. The same year, she executed a will that prohibited the publication of her letters and dramatization of her works. In 1944, she received the gold medal for fiction from the
National Institute of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
, a prestigious award given for an author's total accomplishments. Cather was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1945 and underwent a mastectomy on January 14, 1946. Probably by early 1947, her cancer
metastasized Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, then, ...
to her liver, becoming
stage IV cancer Cancer staging is the process of determining the extent to which a cancer has developed by growing and spreading. Contemporary practice is to assign a number from I to IV to a cancer, with I being an isolated cancer and IV being a cancer that ha ...
. About a year later, on April 24, 1947, Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of 73, in her home at 570 Park Avenue in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. After Cather's death, Edith Lewis destroyed the manuscript of ''Hard Punishments'', according to Cather's instructions. She is buried at the southwest corner of the Old Burying Ground in
Jaffrey, New Hampshire Jaffrey is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,320 at the 2020 census. The main village in town, where 3,058 people resided at the 2020 census, is defined as the Jaffrey census-designated place (CDP) a ...
, alongside Edith Lewis—a place she first visited when joining Isabelle McClung and her husband, violinist
Jan Hambourg Jan Hambourg ( – 29 September 1947) was a violinist, a member of a famous musical family, who made his career in Europe during the early 20th century. Jan Hambourg was born in Voronezh, Russian Empire, the middle brother between the famous pian ...
, at the Shattuck Inn, where she routinely visited later in life owing to its seclusion.


Bibliography

Novels * '' Alexander's Bridge'' (1912) * ''
O Pioneers! O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...
'' (1913) * '' The Song of the Lark'' (1915) * ''
My Ántonia ''My Ántonia'' ( ) is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigra ...
'' (1918) * ''
One of Ours ''One of Ours'' is a 1922 novel by Willa Cather that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an in ...
'' (1922) * ''
A Lost Lady ''A Lost Lady'' is a 1923 novel by American writer Willa Cather. 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. Throughout the st ...
'' (1923) * '' The Professor's House'' (1925) * ''
My Mortal Enemy ''My Mortal Enemy'' is the eighth novel by American author Willa Cather. It was first published in 1926. Plot summary Myra and her husband Oswald return to their fictional hometown of Parthia, Illinois, to visit their relatives. Nellie and Aunt ...
'' (1926) * ''
Death Comes for the Archbishop ''Death Comes for the Archbishop'' is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory. The novel's U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 20 ...
'' (1927) * '' Shadows on the Rock'' (1931) * ''
Lucy Gayheart ''Lucy Gayheart'' is Willa Cather's eleventh novel. It was published in 1935. The novel revolves round the eponymous character, Lucy Gayheart, a young girl from the fictional town of Haverford, Nebraska, located near the Platte River. History So ...
'' (1935) * ''
Sapphira and the Slave Girl ''Sapphira and the Slave Girl'' is Willa Cather's last novel, published in 1940. It is the story of Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a bitter white woman, who becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful young slave. The book balances an a ...
'' (1940) Short fiction * '' The Troll Garden'' (1905) * ''
Youth and the Bright Medusa ''Youth and the Bright Medusa'' is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, '' The Troll Garden''. Contents This collection contains the following stories: * "Coming, Ap ...
'' (1920) * ''
Obscure Destinies ''Obscure Destinies'' is a collection of three short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1932. Each story deals with the death of a central character and asks how the ordinary lives of these characters can be valued and how "beauty was found or ...
'' (1932) * '' Neighbour Rosicky'' (1932) * '' The Old Beauty and Others'' (1948) * ''Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, 1892–1912'' (1965) * '' Uncle Valentine and Other Stories: Willa Cather's Uncollected Short Fiction, 1915–1929'' (1972) Poetry * ''
April Twilights ''April Twilights'' is a 1903 collection of poems by Willa Cather. It was reedited by Cather in 1923 and 1933. The poems were first published in many literary reviews, often under pen names. Literary significance and criticism Cather's influenc ...
'' (1903) * ''April Twilights and Other Poems'' (1923)


Personal life

Scholars disagree about Cather's sexual identity. Some believe it impossible or anachronistic to determine whether she had same-sex attraction, while others disagree. Researcher Deborah Carlin suggests that denial of Cather being a lesbian is rooted in treating same-sex desire "as an insult to Cather and her reputation", rather than a neutral historical perspective. Melissa Homestead has argued that Cather was attracted to Edith Lewis, and in so doing, asked: "What kind of evidence is needed to establish this as a lesbian relationship? Photographs of the two of them in bed together? She was an integral part of Cather’s life, creatively and personally." Beyond her own relationships with women, Cather's reliance on male characters has been used to support the idea of her same-sex attraction.
Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
calls her "erotically evasive in her art" due to prevailing "societal taboos." In any event, throughout Cather's adult life, her closest relationships were with women. These included her college friend
Louise Pound Louise Pound (June 30, 1872 – June 28, 1958) was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same ...
; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
home she stayed for prolonged visits; the opera singer
Olive Fremstad Olive Fremstad (14 March 1871 – 21 April 1951) was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American opera diva who sang in both the mezzo-soprano and soprano ranges.Rosenthal and Warrack (1979) p. 180 Background Born ...
; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life. Cather's relationship with Lewis began in the early 1900s. They lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1908 until Cather's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis lived at No. 5 Bank Street in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. They moved when the apartment was scheduled for demolition during the construction of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue
New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...
line (now the ). While Lewis was selected as the literary trustee for Cather's estate, she was not merely a secretary for Cather's documents but an integral part of Cather's creative process. Beginning in 1922, Cather spent summers on the island of
Grand Manan Grand Manan is a Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy. Grand Manan is also the name of an incorporated village, which includes the main island and all of its adjacent islands, except White Head Island. It is governed as a village and is part of t ...
in New Brunswick, where she bought a cottage in Whale Cove on the Bay of Fundy. This is where her short story, "Before Breakfast", is set. She valued the seclusion of the island and did not mind that her cottage had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity. Anyone wishing to reach her could do so by telegraph or mail. In 1940, she stopped visiting Grand Manan after Canada's entrance to
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, as travel was considerably more difficult; she also began a long recuperation from
gallbladder In vertebrates, the gallbladder, also known as the cholecyst, is a small hollow organ where bile is stored and concentrated before it is released into the small intestine. In humans, the pear-shaped gallbladder lies beneath the liver, although ...
surgery in 1942 that restricted travel. A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many drafts, personal papers, and letters, asking others to do the same. While many complied, some did not. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from the personal papers that remain. But in April 2013, ''The Selected Letters of Willa Cather''—a collection of 566 letters Cather wrote to friends, family, and literary acquaintances such as
Thornton Wilder Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel '' The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and '' The Skin of Our Teeth'' — ...
and F. Scott Fitzgerald—was published, two years after the death of Cather's nephew and second literary executor, Charles Cather. Willa Cather's correspondence revealed the complexity of her character and inner world. The letters do not disclose any intimate details about Cather's personal life, but they do "make clear that erprimary emotional attachments were to women." The Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln works to
digitize DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer- ...
her complete body of writing, including private correspondence and published work. As of 2021, about 2,100 letters have been made freely available to the public, in addition to transcription of her own published writing.


Writing influences

Cather admired
Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
's use of language and characterization. While Cather enjoyed the novels of several women—including
George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...
, the Brontës, and
Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
—she regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental. One contemporary exception was
Sarah Orne Jewett Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern coast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important ...
, who became Cather's friend and mentor. Jewett advised Cather of several things: to use female narrators in her fiction (even though Cather preferred using male perspectives), to write about her " own country" (''O Pioneers!'' was dedicated in large part to Jewett), and to write fiction that explicitly represented romantic attraction between women. Cather was also influenced by the work of
Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer, essayist and journalist, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebra ...
, praising in an essay Mansfield's ability "to throw a luminous streak out onto the shadowy realm of personal relationships." Cather's high regard for the immigrant families forging lives and enduring hardships on the Nebraska plains shaped much of her fiction. The Burlington Depot in Red Cloud brought in many strange and wonderful people to her small town. As a child, she visited immigrant families in her area and returned home in "the most unreasonable state of excitement," feeling that she "had got inside another person's skin." After a trip to Red Cloud in 1916, Cather decided to write a novel based on the events in the life of her childhood friend
Annie Sadilek Pavelka Anna (Annie) Sadilek Pavelka is best known as the real life inspiration for the character Antonia Shimerda in Willa Cather's 1918 novel, ''My Ántonia''. Personal life Annie was born in Bohemia (now Czech Republic), though her date of birth is un ...
, a
Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
n girl who became the model for the title character in ''My Ántonia''. Cather was likewise fascinated by the French-Canadian pioneers from
Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
who had settled in the Red Cloud area while she was a girl.Danker, Kathleen (Winter 2000). "The Influence of Willa Cather's French-Canadian Neighbors in Nebraska in ''Death Comes for the Archbishop'' and ''Shadows on the Rock''." ''Great Plains Quarterly''. p. 34. During a brief stopover in Quebec with Edith Lewis in 1927, Cather was inspired to write a novel set in that French-Canadian city. Lewis recalled: "From the first moment that she looked down from the windows of the hateauFrontenac otelon the pointed roofs and
Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...
outlines of the town of Quebec, Willa Cather was not merely stirred and charmed—she was overwhelmed by the flood of memories, recognition, surmise it called up; by the sense of its extraordinary French character, isolated and kept intact through hundreds of years, as if by a miracle, on this great un-French continent." Cather finished her novel ''Shadows on the Rock'', a historical novel set in 17th-century Quebec, in 1931; it was later included in ''
Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. The French influence is found in many other Cather works, including ''Death Comes for the Archbishop'' (1927) and her final, unfinished novel set in
Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...
, ''Hard Punishments''.


Literary style and reception

Although Cather began her writing career as a journalist, she made a distinction between journalism, which she saw as being primarily informative, and literature, which she saw as an art form. Cather's work is often marked by—and criticized for—its nostalgic tone and themes drawn from memories of her early years on the American plains. Consequently, a sense of place is integral to her work: notions of land, the frontier, pioneering and relationships with western landscapes are recurrent. Even when her heroines were placed in an urban environment, the influence of place was critical, and the way that power was displayed through room layout and furniture is evident in her novels like ''My Mortal Enemy''. Though she hardly confined herself to writing exclusively about the Midwest, Cather is virtually inseparable from the Midwestern identity that she actively cultivated (even though she was not a “native” Midwesterner). While Cather is said to have significantly altered her literary approach in each of her novels, this stance is not universal; some critics have charged Cather with being out of touch with her times and failing to use more experimental techniques in her writing, such as
stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...
. At the same time, others have sought to place Cather alongside modernists by either pointing to the extreme effects of her apparently simple
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
or acknowledging her own "middle ground":
She had formed and matured her ideas on art before she wrote a novel. She had no more reason to follow
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
and
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
, whose work she respected, than they did to follow her. Her style solves the problems in which she was interested. She wanted to stand midway between the journalists whose omniscient objectivity accumulate more fact than any character could notice and the psychological novelist whose use of subjective point of view stories distorts objective reality. She developed her theory on a middle ground, selecting facts from experience on the basis of feeling and then presenting the experience in a lucid, objective style.
The English novelist A. S. Byatt has written that with each work Cather reinvented the novel form to investigate the changes in the human condition over time. Particularly in her frontier novels, Cather wrote of both the beauty and terror of life. Like the exiled characters of Henry James, an author who had a significant influence on the author, most of Cather's major characters live as exiled immigrants, identifying with the immigrants' "sense of homelessness and exile" following her own feelings of exile living on the frontier. It is through their engagement with their environment that they gain their community.
Susan J. Rosowski Susan Jean Rosowski (January 2, 1942November 2, 2004) was a Western American scholar of literature and the works of Willa Cather. Life and education Rosowski was born on January 2, 1942, in Topeka, Kansas. She attended primary school in Phoenix, ...
wrote that Cather was perhaps the first to grant immigrants a respectable position in American literature.


Notes


Footnotes


References


External links


Libraries


''Willa Cather Review''
at th
Willa Cather Foundation

Special Collections & Archives
at The National Willa Cather Center
Willa Cather Archive
at
University of Nebraska-Lincoln A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
* at the
Nebraska State Historical Society History Nebraska, formerly the Nebraska State Historical Society is a Nebraska state agency, founded in 1878 to "encourage historical research and inquiry, spread historical information ... and to embrace alike aboriginal and modern history." I ...

Willa Cather Collection
at
Drew University Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey. Drew has been nicknamed the "University in the Forest" because of its wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three sch ...

Willa Cather–Irene Miner Weisz Papers
at the Newberry Library
Benjamin D. Hitz–Willa Cather Papers
at the Newberry Library
Ann Safford Mandel collection of Willa Cather papers
at the
Mortimer Rare Book Collection The Mortimer Rare Book Collection (MRBC) is the rare books collection of Smith College. Along with the Sophia Smith Collection and Smith College Archives, it makes up Smith College Special Collections. The collection supports both general researc ...


Online editions

* * * * *
Willa Cather
at
Poets' Corner Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in the City of Westminster, London because of the high number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there. The first poe ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cather, Willa 1873 births 1947 deaths 20th-century American biographers 20th-century American Episcopalians 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American poets 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers American magazine writers American people of Welsh descent American women biographers American women novelists American women poets American women short story writers Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductees Critics of Christian Science Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences American lesbian writers Novelists from New York (state) Novelists from Pennsylvania Novelists from Virginia People from Grand Manan People from Greenwich Village People from Red Cloud, Nebraska People from the Upper East Side People from Winchester, Virginia Poets from Nebraska Poets from New York (state) Poets from Pennsylvania Poets from Virginia Pulitzer Prize for the Novel winners University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni Writers from Nebraska Writers from Manhattan Writers from Pittsburgh LGBT people from Virginia Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters