Willa Cather – författare

'As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains...And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.'My Antonia (1918) depicts the pioneering period of European settlement on the tall-grass prairie of the American midwest, with its beautiful yet terrifying landscape, rich ethnic mix of immigrants and native-born Americans, and communities who share life's joys and sorrows. Jim Burden recounts his memories of Antonia Shimerda, whose family settle in Nebraska from Bohemia. Together they share childhoods spent in a new world. Jim leaves the prairie for college and a career in the east, while Antonia devotes herself to her large family and productive farm. Her story is that of the land itself, a moving portrait of endurance and strength.Described on publication as 'one of the best [novels] that any American has ever done', My Antonia paradoxically took Cather out of the rank of provincial novelists as the same time that it celebrated the provinces, and mythologized a period of American history that had to be lost before its value could be understood. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

INTRODUCED BY A.S. BYATT'She is undoubtedly one of the greatest American writers' OBSERVER 'A triumph' HERMIONE LEE 'Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic' HELEN DUMORE On the eve of his move to a new, more desirable residence, Professor Godfrey St Peter finds himself in the shabby study of his former home. Surrounded by the comforting, familiar sights of his past, he surveys his life and the people he has loved: his wife Lillian, his daughters and above all, Tom Outland, his most outstanding student and once, his son-in-law to be. Enigmatic and courageous - and a tragic victim of the Great War - Tom has remained a source of inspiration to the professor. But he has also left behind him a troubling legacy which has brought betrayal and fracture to the women he loves most . . .

'Quite simply a masterpiece ... I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells' A. N. Wilson'Where there is great love there are always miracles'Two French priests have been sent to New Mexico to reawaken the faith. There, they must contend with unforgiving landscapes, danger, rebellion and loneliness. But through their many years together they are sustained by faith, friendship and the awe-inspiring majesty that surrounds them. A work of great simplicity and sublime beauty, Willa Cather's acclaimed novel asks, what is a life well lived?Death Comes for the Archbishop is a masterpiece by the author of O Pioneers! and the great novelist of American frontier life.'Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously ... a major, and rare, artistic achievement' A. S. Byatt

The final novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is a celebration of the American midwest with Cather's strongest heroine at its heartJim and Ántonia meets as children in the wide open plains of Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century. Jim leaves for college and a career in the east, while Ántonia stays at home, dedicating herself to her farm and family. As the years roll by, Jim will come to view Ántonia as the embodiment of the prairie itself - tough, spirited and enduring, despite the hardness and loneliness of pioneer life. Willa Cather's beautiful novel is a celebration of the Nebraskan prairie she loved she much, and a powerful depiction of a pivotal era in the making of America.

Uprooted from a well-ordered life in Virginia when she was nine, Willa Cather came of age in the West during the last years of the American frontier. She developed a love for the beauty of the open grassland and an abiding interest in the Old World customs of her neighbors, the dreamers and builders who inhabit her fiction. This collection includes work from the early part of Cather's career and clearly marks themes and landscapes that she would detail and explore for the remainder of her life. Alongside THE BOHEMIAN GIRL, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, and Oscar Wilde to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful boxset in the aim to attract contemporary fans of short fiction to these revered masters of the form. Also, in each of these selections will appear a story from one of the new collections being published in the "Summer of the Short Story." A story from Lydia Peelle's forthcoming collection, REASONS FOR AND ADVANTAGES OF BREATHING, will be printed at the back of this volume.

'One afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed by a pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country somewhere in central New Mexico. He had lost his way'Death Comes for the Archbishop is the story of two missionary priests, travelling through the American Southwest in the aftermath of the Mexican American wars. Father Jean-Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant spread Catholic faith and religious practices, convert and gather new souls, and discipline wayward priests. Their missionary journey takes them towards a greater understanding of the place and people they serve.Cather wrote at length about the layers within her texts and the influences and the details she incorporated. This edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop edited by Catherine Morley highlights and addresses these details: Cather's engagement with fine art, her palimpsestic layering of texts, and her movement through different languages. Morley also places Cather among her American modernist peers, while reflecting upon the thematic details of the text, and offering insights into Cather's personal life and her life as a writer.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'I knew at once I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries'The Professor's House (1925) depicts the mid-life crisis of Godfrey St. Peter, a history professor at a midwestern state university who is disillusioned with his wife and daughters, his university, and the materialism of American culture. He longs for Tom Outland, his most brilliant student, who died on a World War I battlefield. At the same time, Tom's recollection of discovering hidden cliff dweller ruins in New Mexico interrupt Godfrey's narrative. Cather's own experiences of travel in the Southwestern US with her partner, Edith Lewis, shadow and enrich her depictions of Tom's New Mexican experiences.Cather's sixth novel is a compelling modernist work of art that raises questions that are still compelling a century later. What is the purpose of a university education? Are the sacrifices of war worth the outcome? To whom do the American past and the country's future belong? A daring experiment in form, the novel is haunted by war and love.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

`For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious.' Willa Cather's second novel, O Pioneers! (1913) tells the story of Alexandra Bergson and her determination to save her immigrant family's Nebraska farm. Clear-headed and fiercely independent, Alexandra's passionate faith in the prairie makes her a wealthy landowner. By placing a strong, self-reliant woman at the centre of her tale, Cather gives the quintessentially American novel of the soil a radical cast. Yet, although influenced by the democratic utopianism of Walt Whitman and the serene regionalism of Sarah Orne Jewett, O Pioneers! is more than merely an elegy for the lost glories of America's pioneer past. In its rage for order and efficiency, the novel testifies to the cultural politics of the Progressive Era, the period of massive social and economic transformations that helped to modernize the United States in the years between the Civil War and World War. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The second novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is a passionate portrait of the artist as a young womanThea Kronberg, a young girl from a small town in Colorado has a great gift - her beautiful singing voice. Her talent takes her to the great opera houses of Europe, and through ambition and hard work, she forges a life as an artist. But if she can never go home again, nor can she leave behind her past. At last, in a desert canyon in Arizona, Thea has a revelation that will allow her to attain a new state of spirituality and become a truly great artist.'Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic' Helen Dunmore'The Song of the Lark illuminates all her work' A. S. Byatt'Lingers long in the memory' Joyce Carol Oates

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed itTo the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, Nebraska following the death of their father. As the years pass, Alexandra rises heroically to the challenge, finding strength in the savage beauty of the land even as loneliness and personal tragedies crowd in. A rapturous work of understated lyricism, Willa Cather's 1913 tale of a pioneer woman who tames the wild, hostile lands of the Nebraskan prairie is also the story of what it means to be American.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksHow light and alive she was! Like a bird caught in a net . . .Marian Forrester enchants everyone around her: her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; the small town of Sweet Water; and Niel Herbert, her unwavering confidant. Yet, her irresistible charm and dazzling wit conceal a dangerous vulnerability – and her greatest secret. A significant inspiration for The Great Gatsby, this exquisite novella is a poignant elegy for a bygone era, fading into history.

This Norton Critical Edition brings to life—through Cather's words, and through the words and images of others—the uniquely American frontier experience. In inscribing a copy of O Pioneers! for a childhood friend, Cather wrote, "In this one I hit the home pasture…" "Contexts and Backgrounds" includes a rich selection of autobiographical and biographical remembrances (including three interviews with Cather), literary contexts (by Cather and her contemporaries, Henry James and Sarah Orne Jewett), and writings on the American West (including selected letters that paint a picture of one family's life on the Nebraska prairie). "Criticism" provides seven contemporary reviews and eight modern critical interpretations by David Stouck, John J. Murphy, C. Susan Wiesenthal, Marilee Lindemann, Melissa Ryan, Guy Reynolds, and Sharon O'Brien.

Set in the Nebraska landscape in a community evocative of Cather’s own (Red Cloud), My Ántonia tells the story of Ántonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant, and Jim Burden, who like Cather was uprooted from Virginia to the Nebraska prairie. Ántonia and Jim, like many of the other characters in this 1918 novel, are based on Cather’s childhood friends. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the first published edition of the novel. It is accompanied by explanatory footnotes, key illustrations, an introduction that gives readers a historical overview of both author and novel, and a note on the text.“Contexts and Backgrounds” is a rich collection of materials organized around the novel’s central themes: “Autobiographical and Biographical Writings,” “Letters,” and “Americanization and Immigration.” Willa Cather, Edith Lewis, Latrobe Carroll, Rose C. Feld, Guy Reynolds, Woodrow Wilson, Peter Roberts, Horace M. Kallen, Sarka B. Hrbkova, and Rose Rosicky, among others, are included.“Criticism” spans a century of scholarship on Willa Cather and My Ántonia, from contemporary reviews by Henry Walcott Boynton, H. L. Mencken, and Elia W. Peattie, among others, to recent critical assessments by Terence Martin, Blanche Gelfant, Jean Schwind, Richard H. Millington, Susan Rosowski, Mike Fischer, Janis Stout, Marilee Lindemann, and Linda Joyce Brown.A Chronology of Cather’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

One of Cather's earliest novels — written in 1918 — is the story of Antonia Shimerda, who arrives on the Nebraska frontier as part of a family of Bohemian emigrants. In quiet, probing depth, the story commemorates the spirit and courage of the immigrant pioneers whose persistence and strength helped build America.