Willa Cather

Willa Cather
White woman looking straight ahead with a black hat
Cather in 1936
BornWilella Sibert Cather
(1873-12-07)December 7, 1873
Gore, Virginia, U.S.
DiedApril 24, 1947(1947-04-24) (aged 73)
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeJaffrey, New Hampshire, U.S.
OccupationNovelist
EducationUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln (BA)
Period1905–1947
PartnerEdith Lewis (c. 1908–1947)
Signature

Willa Sibert Cather (/ˈkæðər/;[1] born Wilella Sibert Cather;[2] December 7, 1873[A] – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

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, Cather moved to Pittsburgh 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 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. Cather and Lewis are buried together in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

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 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.

  1. ^ "willa-cather – Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com". oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com.
  2. ^ "Willa Cather | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author & Novelist | Britannica". www.britannica.com. October 4, 2023. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
  3. ^ Schwind, Jean (1985). "Latour's Schismatic Church: The Radical Meaning in the Pictorial Methods of Death Comes for the Archbishop". Studies in American Fiction. 13 (1): 71–88. doi:10.1353/saf.1985.0024. S2CID 161453359.
  4. ^ Wilson, James Southall (1953). "Of Willa Cather". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 29 (3): 470–474. ISSN 0042-675X. JSTOR 26439850.
  5. ^ Bradford, Curtis (1955). "Willa Cather's Uncollected Short Stories". American Literature. 26 (4): 537–551. doi:10.2307/2921857. ISSN 0002-9831. JSTOR 2921857.
  6. ^ Morley, C. (September 1, 2009). "DAVID PORTER. On the Divide: The Many Lives of Willa Cather". The Review of English Studies. 60 (246): 674–676. doi:10.1093/res/hgp042.
  7. ^ Weddle, Mary Ray. "Mower's Tree | Willa Cather Archive". cather.unl.edu. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  8. ^ Shively, James R. (1948). "Willa Cather Juvenilia". Prairie Schooner. 22 (1): 97–111. ISSN 0032-6682. JSTOR 40623968.
  9. ^ Carpentier, Martha C. (2007). "The Deracinated Self: Immigrants, Orphans, and the "Migratory Consciousness" of Willa Cather and Susan Glaspell". Studies in American Fiction. 35 (2): 132. doi:10.1353/saf.2007.0001. S2CID 162245931.
  10. ^ Jewell, Andrew (2007). "'Curious Survivals': The Letters of Willa Cather". New Letters. 74 (1): 154–175.
  11. ^ Bennett, Mildred R. (1959). "Willa Cather in Pittsburgh". Prairie Schooner. 33 (1): 64–76. ISSN 0032-6682. JSTOR 40626192.
  12. ^ Gorman, Michael (2017). "Rural Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Imperialism in Willa Cather's One of Ours" (PDF). The Japanese Journal of American Studies. 28: 61. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  13. ^ Baker, Bruce (1968). "Nebraska Regionalism in Selected Works of Willa Gather". Western American Literature. 3 (1): 19. doi:10.1353/wal.1968.0000. S2CID 159958823.
  14. ^ French, Marilyn (1987). "Muzzled Women". College Literature. 14 (3): 219–229. ISSN 0093-3139. JSTOR 25111750.
  15. ^ Hinz, John P. (1949). "Willa Cather-Prairie Spring". Prairie Schooner. 23 (1): 82–88. ISSN 0032-6682. JSTOR 40624074.
  16. ^ Boynton, Percy H. (1924). "Willa Cather". The English Journal. 13 (6): 373–380. doi:10.2307/802876. ISSN 0013-8274. JSTOR 802876.
  17. ^ Whicher, George F. (1951). "Limited Investigations". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 27 (3): 457–460. ISSN 0042-675X. JSTOR 26439605.


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