New Releases by Willa Cather

Set in the 1850s, this short novel is about the struggles and triumphs of a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, and his loyal friend and vicar, Father Joseph Vaillant. They have been sent to reawaken and spread the Roman Catholic faith in an area where it has grown weak: New Mexico, recently annexed by the United States. Desolate and remote, the territory is home to many diverse groups: Mexicans, including those on ranches established for hundreds of years; Indians, who have been there much longer and who are divided by language and customs into thirty nations; and newcomers—hunters, fur trappers, and those seeking gold. This book is as much their story as it is the story of the priests and the vast changes the land itself underwent in those years. Death Comes for the Archbishop was a departure for Willa Cather, who had already published eight novels before publishing this one in 1927. The novel doesn’t try to follow a single unified story the way many historical novels do; instead, its nine chapters are episodic, filled with stories, legends, histories, and descriptions of the Southwest, which Cather had been visiting for many years before she started writing it. Many of its main characters, including the bishop and his vicar, are thinly disguised versions of real-life historical figures, while other famous New Mexicans of the day, including the frontiersman Kit Carson and the “powerful old priest,” Antonio José Martínez, appear under their actual names. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

The Professor's House is a novel by American novelist Willa Cather. Published in 1925, the novel was written over the course of several years. Cather first wrote the centerpiece, "Tom Outland's Story," and then later wrote the two framing chapters "The Family" and "The Professor." When Professor Godfrey St. Peter and wife move to a new house, he becomes uncomfortable with the route his life is taking. He keeps on his dusty study in the old house in an attempt to hang on to his old life. The marriages of his two daughters have removed them from the home and added two new sons-in-law, precipitating a mid-life crisis that leaves the Professor feeling as though he has lost the will to live because he has nothing to look forward to.

My Antonia is a novel by an American writer Willa Cather. It is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. They are both became pioneers and settled in Nebraska in the end of the 19th century. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. The narrator and the main character of the novel My Antonia, Jim grows up in Black Hawk, Nebraska from age 10 Eventually, he becomes a successful lawyer and moves to New York City.

My Ántonia (first published 1918) is considered the greatest novel by American writer Willa Cather. My Ántonia - pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of "Ántonia" - is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia.

The first of her renowned prairie novels--a story that expresses Cather's conviction that "the history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." When Alexandra Bergson takes over the family farm after her father's death, she falls under the spell of the rich, forbidding Nebraska prairie.

In the final volume in her prairie trilogy, Willa Cather fully transforms memory into art to create her most autobiographical novel. 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.

Willa Cather’s third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg. In creating Thea’s character, Cather was inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad, although Thea’s early life also has much in common with Cather’s own. Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea’s long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the Southwest, and to New York and the Metropolitan Opera House. As she makes her own way in the world from an unlikely background, Thea distills all her experiences and relationships into the power and passion of her singing, despite the cost. The Song of the Lark presents Cather’s vision of a true artist. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition includes a historical essay providing fresh insight into the novel and Cather’s writing process, photographs and maps, and explanatory notes providing a full range of biographical and historical information. The novel, edited according to standards set by the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, presents a clean, authoritative text of the first edition and charts the subsequent drastic revisions.

O Pioneers! is a novel by American author Willa Cather. It tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country beside or near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century.

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic? includes a glossary and reader?s notes to help the modern reader contend with Cather?s allusions and vocabulary. My Antonia, Willa Cather?s vivid portrayal of immigrant life on the American prairie during the nineteenth century, has been a favorite since it first appeared in 1918. The harsh?yet forgiving?land, the growth and maturity of Jim Burden, the narrator, the intriguing characters, and the force of Antonia?s strength all combine to make this novel exceptional. Cather?s style perfectly depicts the sparseness of the prairie and the desolation of the immigrants? existence in winter and comes alive when the glory and beauty of spring emerge. Whether you see it as a love story, an indelible portrait of a wise, enduring female character, or a coming-of-age novel, My Antonia is deserving of its respected place in American literature.

An infamous clause in Willa Cather's will, forbidding publication of her letters and other papers, has long caused consternation among Cather scholars. For Cather, a complex and private person who seldom made revelatory public pronouncements, personal letters provide-or would provide-an especially valuable key to understanding. But because of the terms of her will, that key is not readily available. Cather's letters will not come into public domain until the year 2017. Until then, even quotation, let alone publication in full, is prohibited. Janis P. Stout has gathered over eighteen hundred of Cather's letters--all the letters currently known to be available--and provides a brief summary of each, as well as a biographical directory identifying correspondents and a multisection index of the widely scattered letters organized by location, by correspondent, and by names and titles mentioned. This book will be an essential resource for Cather scholars.

The 1912 novel about a bridge builder who comes to know himself through his relations with his wife in Boston and a young Irish actress in London is introduced by an essay on the circumstances of its composition

Willa Cather's masterful novel marks both her return to the Nebraska of her youth and the discovery of an original literary voice. O Pioneers! vividly recalls the stories of the immigrant settlers Cather knew during her childhood and teenage years in Red Cloud. This Norton Critical Edition brings to life-through Cather's words, and through the words and images of others-the uniquely American frontier experience. "Contexts and Backgrounds" includes a rich selection of autobiographical and biographical material, including three interviews with Cather (1913, 1915, 1921). Literary contexts are provided by Cather and by Henry James, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Walt Whitman. The American West is revealed in words, photographs, and illustrations, including a selection from the Oblinger family letters (part of the Library of Congress American Memory project), Frederick Jackson Turner on the historical importance of the American frontier, and original documents from the Nebraska Historical Society. Mike Fischer explores Cather's relationship to Native American history and experience, questioning what role, if any, imperialism played in her creative process. "Criticism" provides seven contemporary reviews of O Pioneers! and modern critical interpretations by David Stouck, John J. Murphy, C. Susan Wiesenthal, Marilee Lindemann, Melissa Ryan, Guy Reynolds, and Sharon O'Brien. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included. Book jacket.