Willa Cather

'Miss Cather claims our eager attention when ever she publishes a new book' NEW YORK TIMES 'She is undoubtedly one of the century's greatest American writers' OBSERVER'This, her last novel, is a stirring and beautifully executed depiction of a society that has vanished forever' BELFAST TELEGRAPHOriginally published in 1940, this is Willa Cather's last novel, a stirring and beautifully executed description of a society and conditions that have vanished forever, and a retrospective portrait of the Old South with its stain of slavery.By 1856, Sapphira Colbert is one of few Virginians who owns slaves, a policy her husband Henry finds increasingly difficult to countenance. Sapphira presides over her Black Creek Valley property with disciplined resolution and the help of her black maid, Nancy. Henry runs the Mill and sleeps there too - their marriage a formality. Sapphira's life is an arid one and, confined to a wheelchair, she has amble opportunity for speculation. When she hears a conversation linking her husbands name to that of Nancy, that speculation festers and the horrific potential of Sapphira's power is unleashed . . .

'She is undoubtedly one of the greatest American writers' OBSERVER 'The time will come when she will be ranked above Hemingway' LEON EDEL 'The Song of the Lark illuminates all her work' A. S. BYATTThea Kronborg is born into poverty in a small desert town in the American Midwest. One of seven children, she is somehow set apart, a fact recognised by the discerning few, including Ray Kennedy who longs to marry her, but whose fate it is to set her free.With her rugged will and pioneer spirit, Thea carves her way from Moonstone, Colorado, to windy Chicago, from Dresden to New York and a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera. She becomes a great opera singer but learns that as a true artist, she must make the most bitter sacrifices of all . . .In prose as shimmering and piercingly true as the light in a desert canyon, Cather takes us into the heart of a woman coming to know her deepest self.

'The thing about Willa Cather's landscape and figures is that not only were they born alive but remain so after six decades' GUARDIAN 'Short stories speak to those aspects of experience in which that loneliness seems most acutely felt' NEW YORK TIMES'She possessed an intensity of observation and a curiosity about human psychology, especially as it relates to nature, that never waned' PARIS REVIEW This rich selection of Willa Cather's short fiction is drawn from every period of her writing life, and mixes the little known with the much anthologised. Here we have a range of stories from short, vivid sketches to novellas. They tell of the bitter lives of Nebraskan immigrants and of the pull between provincial America and the cosmopolitan world of art. Some of the most poignant deal with the challenges and dilemmas for the American artist. Her marvellous late stories are charged with beautifully controlled feeling and eloquently describe the tensions and complications of family life. Cather also let herself go in these stories in ways she did not in the longer fiction with harsh satires of New York, chilling glimpses of the supernatural and strong expressions of sexual feeling. These are stories that add immeasurably to our perception of Cather's range and complexity.

'She is undoubtedly one of the greatest American writers' OBSERVER'Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic' HELEN DUNMORE'Her prose has a supple, lit-up sensuality that constantly makes the reader stop and read again as in a fine piece of poetry' MARINA WARNER At the end of the seventeenth century in Quebec, a French family, the Auclairs, begin a life very different from the one they knew in Paris. On her mother's death, ten-year-old Cecile is entrusted with the care of the household and of her father, Euclid, the town's apothecary.Two years later, in 1697, Cecile and her father prepare for the long, difficult winter ahead with no word from home. The news of the world they have left behind must wait until spring, when the annual boats from France are able to make their way up the St Lawrence. For her father, it will be a painful exile, but for the young Cecile life holds innumerable joys as old ties are relinquished and new ones are formed . . .

The narrator reflects with wistful, unjudgmental melancholy on his family, the experience of growing up in the midst of only partial tamed vastness, the humanity and folly of those around him, and above on on the captivating immigrant girl Antonia, whom he must always love from afar. My Antonia is full of the quiet losses of a life full of difficult decisions, but also the quiet satisfactions of goodness cherished despite all hardship.

Thea always knew she was destined for greatness. She has a fabulous voice, one that she believes will bring her out of the lowness of her situation. Though the townsfolk know that she has a great voice, it will do nothing for her future. Her voice coach Herr Munch is not at the caliber that she wishes to attain. She knows that there are better instructors in Chicago and her dream is to go there someday. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't have the money to travel there from Colorado and neither does her family. But one of her longtime friends, Dr. Archie, knows that she has always dreamed of going away and has endeavored to find a way for her to go. And when he does, she cannot refuse. Will the big city embrace her and her talent? Or will the city prove to be too fickle?Song of the Lark is generally considered to be the second novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers (1913) and preceding My ntonia (1918).

Thea always knew she was destined for greatness. She has a fabulous voice, one that she believes will bring her out of the lowness of her situation. Though the townsfolk know that she has a great voice, it will do nothing for her future. Her voice coach Herr Munch is not at the caliber that she wishes to attain. She knows that there are better instructors in Chicago and her dream is to go there someday. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't have the money to travel there from Colorado and neither does her family. But one of her longtime friends, Dr. Archie, knows that she has always dreamed of going away and has endeavored to find a way for her to go. And when he does, she cannot refuse. Will the big city embrace her and her talent? Or will the city prove to be too fickle?Song of the Lark is generally considered to be the second novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers (1913) and preceding My ntonia (1918).

Although the land on which the Nebraska farm boy Claude Wheeler lives is settled, he himself has inherited the pioneer spirit of adventure, the frontiersman's purpose, and the settler's sense of idealism. In One of Ours, Willa Cather explores the dissonance between Claude's attitudes and his physical reality and studies how this conflict affects him. Drawing on her own family's experience of the war through her cousin G. P. Cather, who fought in World War I, Cather observes how an otherwise misdirected young man could find purpose and meaning in war and how his death would affect his family's memories of him. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, One of Ours paints Claude as a young man who seeks an escape from a conventional and unfulfilling life through the realization of "something splendid" in his military experience in Europe. This Willa Cather Scholarly Edition puts One of Ours in a new and revealing context. The novel is edited according to standards set by the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association and presents the full range of biographical, historical, and textual information on the novel.

A rich and suggestive work which contrasts the middle-aged disillusion of Professor St Peter with his memories of his favourite student, the brilliant explorer and inventor, Tom Outland.

Marian Forrester brings delight to her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; to the small town of Sweet Water where they live; and to Niel Herbert, the young narrator of her story, who falls in love with her as a boy and later becomes her confidant. He witnesses this vibrant woman in all her contradictory facets: by turns faithless and steadfast, dazzling and pathetic, invincibly charming yet dangerously vulnerable to the men she charms. All are bewitched by her charisma and grace - and all are ultimately betrayed. 'This classic has the striking economy of Hemingway, and is as poignant an elegy for the pioneer West as I have read. The vivacious Marian Forrester stands as a romantic paean to the pioneer's reckless abandon, counterpointed by the narrator's prim decency' The Times

In 1851 Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are despatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows - gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly forty years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses and occasionally ecstasy in their wake. But it takes a death for them to make their mark on the landscape forever . . .

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. S. BYATT'During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood . . . His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.'My Antonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman's life on the Nebraska plains, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. The beautiful, free-spirited, wild-eyed girl captured Jim's imagination long ago and haunts him still, embodying for him the elemental spirit of the American frontier.In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction.

Of Antonia, the passionate heroine of Willa Cather's greatest novel, the narrator says that she left 'images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time'.

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.

Shadows on the Rock, written after Willa Cather discovered Quebec City during an unplanned stay in 1928, is the second of her "Catholic" historical novels and reflects her fascination with finding a little piece of France in eastern Canada. Set in the late seventeenth century, the novel centers on the activities of the widowed apothecary Euclide Auclair and his young daughter, Cecile. To Auclair's house and shop come trappers, missionaries, craftsmen, the indigent—those seeking cures, a taste of France, or liberation from the corruptions caused there by the excesses of the French court. Set against these fictional characters, historical personages such as Bishop Laval, Count Frontenac, and others contend in the political life of the vast colony. This edition, which is approved by the Modern Language Association, will be of special importance to Cather scholars. Not only is Cather's mining of historical sources explored in extensive explanatory notes, but a recently discovered reworked draft of the novel has been incorporated into the textual analysis. There is also a generous illustration section with maps of the setting.