Most Popular Books by Willa Cather

In this symphonically powerful novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning heroines in American fiction, a woman whose robust high spirits and calm, undemonstrative strength are emblematic of the virtues Cather most admired in her country. Antonia Shimerda is the daughter of Bohemian immigrants struggling with the oceanic loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. Through the eyes of Jim Burden, her tutor and disappointed admirer, we follow Antonia from farm to town and through hardships both natural and human, surviving everything from poverty to a failed romance--and not only surviving, but triumphing. In the end, Antonia is exactly what Burden says she is: a woman who "had that something which fires the imagination, [a woman who] could stop . . . one''s breath for a moment by a look or a gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things."

"Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather''s classic novel is an American version of "Madame Bovary". It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary and gifted woman who is stifled by marriage."--Ingram.

The Professor''s House Willa Cather American Literary Classics 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. The novel initially addresses the Professor''s interactions with his new sons-in-law and his family, while continually alluding to the pain they all feel over the death of Tom Outland in the Great War. Outland was not only the Professor''s student and friend, but the fiancé of his elder daughter, who is now living off the wealth created by the "Outland vacuum."

Beloved American novelist Willa Cather’s nostalgic classic about life on the Midwest prairie. Emigrating from Bohemia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, with her family, Ántonia discovers no white-framed farmhouse or snug barn. Instead, the cultured Shimerda family finds itself huddled in a primitive sod house buffeted by the ceaselessly blowing winds on the Midwest prairie. For her childhood friend Jim Burden, Ántonia comes to embody the elemental spirit of this frontier. Working alongside men, she survives without compromising the rich, deep power of her nature. And Willa Cather’s lush descriptions of the rolling Nebraska grasslands interweave with the blossoming of a woman in the early days of the twentieth century in a novel that is an epic chronicle of America’s past. The novel Cather herself considered her best, My Ántonia is one of those rare, highly prized works of great literature that not only enriches its readers but immerses them in a tale superbly told. With an Introduction by Marilyn Sides and an Afterword by Terese Svoboda

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.

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 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.

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 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.