American Literature/20th Century/Willa Cather

Life
Wilella Sibert "Willa" Cather was born about 1876 on a farm in Virgina, but her family eventually moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. Baby baby baby She attended the University of Nebraska and contributed writings to the Nebraska State Journal. She worked as an English teacher in Pittsburgh from 1901 to 1906 and then got a job at McClure's Magazine in New York City. Her first novel, Alexander's Bridge was published in serial form in that magazine. In 1908 Cather was named managing editor of McClure's. She worked at McClure's until 1912, at which time she devoted herself to writing. Cather died in 1947 in New York.

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The early writing of Willa Cather was influenced by Henry James until another author, Sarah Orne Jewett urged her to develop her own style and to write about her home in Nebraska. Some critics, such as H. L. Mencken praised her for writing about ordinary people in ordinary language. She is also known for the clarity of her writing.

She presents the relationships between her characters subtly, as in this passage from one of her novels:


 * People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were... A man and woman draw apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other... In age we lose everything; even the power to love. --My Mortal Enemy, Part II, Ch. 4

Awards and Honors

 * Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923 for her novel One of Ours, which was inspired by her brother's letters from the field during World War I.
 * She won the Howells Medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1930 for Death Comes for the Archbishop.
 * She received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Columbia University, Yale University, Princeton, and Creighton.
 * She is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.

Works

 * Nonfiction books
 * The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909) by co-authored with Georgine Milmine (reprinted U of Nebraska Press, 1993)
 * On Writing (1949) (reprint U of Nebraska Press, 1988)
 * Books of poetry
 * April Twilights (1903)
 * Collections of short stories
 * The Troll Garden (1905)
 * Selected Novels
 * Alexander's Bridge (1912)
 * O Pioneers! (1913)
 * The Song of the Lark (1915)
 * My Ántonia (1918)
 * One of Ours (1922)
 * A Lost Lady (1923)
 * Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
 * Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)