Willa Sibert Cather. She was known as Willa Cather . She was an American narrator whose work reveals great poetic sensitivity and descriptive power when evoking her childhood memories in Nebraska , the hard struggle against nature of the immigrant colonizers and the contradictions between the city and the land.
Biographical summary
Biographical summary
Born to a family of Irish and Alsatian origin, Cather spent her childhood in Nebraska, at a time when this western border region was being settled by Czech and Scandinavian immigrants. It was among these hot-blooded countrymen and adventurers, with a vigor and zest for life that was quite the opposite of the arid, conventional respectability of the “indigenous” Americans of the region, that Cather spent her formative years. From these men she captured the essences of basic human virtues: passion, spiritual vitality, “personal courage, magnanimity, and a beautiful and generous conduct.”
Cather was sensitive and selective in spirit, her literary teachers being Flaubert and Henry James , while her instinctive literary preferences ran to the exquisite prose makers Hawthorne , Turgenev , Mérimée, Conrad , and Stephen Crane . Headstrong and independent from childhood, after graduating from the University of Nebraska she set out to live life to the fullest , both at home and abroad, earning her living in the meantime as a journalist, teacher , and magazine editor.
When she had saved enough money from these occupations, she stopped working for others and began to write for her own profit. Her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge ( 1912 ) – preceded in 1903 by a volume of poetry – followed the tradition of James, but the result left much to be desired. The following year, with O Pioneers!, the author really discovered her own personality and saw in it the immigrants of her youth. She then published a series of insignificant stories, until she looked back, which she tried to reflect in novels or literary chronicles, such as Death and the Archbishop ( 1927 ), set in the Spanish-Catholic southwest, and Shadows on the Rock ( 1931 ), set in French-Catholic Quebec . These works are among the most beautiful of this author. He travelled widely in Europe and America and spent the last years of his life in New York . He also published a volume of essays entitled Not Under Forty ( 1936 ).
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Famous for her novels in which she portrays the everyday lives of ordinary people in the United States , using equally everyday language. Her work reflects a strong influence of the novelist Henry James , although she later abandoned this influence to focus on the description of Nebraska , where she lived with her family from the age of nine, achieving success among critics and the public. She also published short stories and literary essays.
Novels
- Alexander’s Bridge ( 1912 )
- O Pioneers! ( 1913 ). Translated in Spain as Los colonos by Caralt Editores, S.A., 1956 , ISBN 978-84-217-2359-3; Pioneros by Alba Editorial, 2001, ISBN 978-84-8428-099-6
- The Song of the Lark ( 1915 ). Editorial Pre-Textos, 2001 , ISBN 978-84-8191-386-6
- My Ántonia (Mi Ántonia, 1918 ). There are several editions in Spain: Mi Antonia, Caralt Editores, 1955. ISBN 978-84-217-2358-6; Mi Antonia, Alba Editorial, 2002 , ISBN 978-84-8428-013-2 and Mi Ántonia, New Pocket Editions, 2003 , ISBN 978-84-9793-153-3.
- One of Ours ( 1922 ). Won the Pulitzer Prize.
- A Lost Lady (1923), short novel. Alba Editorial, SL, 2002. ISBN 978-84-8428-162-7; reed. 2008, ISBN 978-84-8428-395-9
- The Professor’s House ( 1925 ). Plaza & Janés, 1963 .
- My Mortal Enemy ( 1926 ), short novel. Alba Editorial, 1999 , ISBN 978-84-89846-95-1
- Death Comes for the Archbishop ( 1927 ). Ediciones Cátedra, 2000, ISBN 978-84-376-1793-0
- Shadows on the Rock ( 1931 )
- Lucy Gayheart ( 1935 ). Alba Editorial, SL, 2008. ISBN 978-84-8428-417-8
- Sapphira and the Slave Girl ( 1940 )
Essays
- The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (with Georgine Milmine, 1909 ) (reprinted by U Nebraska Press, 1993 )
- On Writing (1949) (republished by U Nebraska Press, 1988 )
- Not Under Forty (articles) 1936. In Spain: For those over forty, Alba Editoria, 2002 .
Collections
- April Twilights (poetry) 1903
- The Troll Garden (stories) 1905
- Youth and the Bright Medusa (stories) 1920
- Obscure Destinies (three stories) 1932
- The Old Beauty (three stories) 1948