Willa Cather was the 1922 winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her breakthrough in literature were the three novels featured here in this edition, the so-called “Great Plains Trilogy”. All three novels stage in Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains territory and deal with the life there, family challenges and romance. Included are: O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark My Antonia
Willa Cather was the 1922 winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her breakthrough in literature were the three novels featured here in this edition, the so-called Prairie trilogy. All three novels stage in Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains territory and deal with the life there, family challenges and romance. Featured here are: O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark My Antonia
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.
When the young Swedish-descended Alexandra Bergson inherits her father's farm in Nebraska, she must transform the land from a wind-swept prairie landscape into a thriving enterprise. She dedicates herself completely to the land—at the cost of great sacrifices. O Pioneers! [1913] is Willa Cather's great masterpiece about American pioneers, where the land is as important a character as the people who cultivate it. WILLA CATHER [1873-1947] was an American author. After studying at the University of Nebraska, she worked as a teacher and journalist. Cather's novels often focus on settlers in the USA with a particular emphasis on female pioneers. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, and in 1943, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
First published in 1926, this book is Willa Cather's sparest and most dramatic novel, a dark and prescient portrait of a marriage that subverts our oldest notions about the nature of domestic happiness. As a young woman, Myra Henshawe gave up a fortune to marry for love--a boldly romantic gesture that became a legend in her family. But this worldly, sarcastic, and perhaps even wicked woman may have been made for something greater than love. In her portrait of Myra and in her exquisitely nuanced depiction of her marriage, Cather shows the evolution of a human spirit as it comes to bridle against the constraints of ordinary happiness and seek an otherwordly fulfillment. My Mortal Enemy is a work whose drama and intensely moral imagination make it unforgettable.
A haunting tribute to the heroic pioneers who shaped the American Midwest This powerful novel by Willa Cather is considered to be one of her finest works and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. It tells the stories of several immigrant families who start new lives in America in rural Nebraska. This powerful tribute to the quiet heroism of those whose struggles and triumphs shaped the American Midwest highlights the role of women pioneers, in particular. Written in the style of a memoir penned by Antonia’s tutor and friend, the book depicts one of the most memorable heroines in American literature, the spirited eldest daughter of a Czech immigrant family, whose calm, quite strength and robust spirit helped her survive the hardships and loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. The two form an enduring bond and through his chronicle, we watch Antonia shape the land while dealing with poverty, treachery, and tragedy. “No romantic novel ever written in America...is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.” -H. L. Mencken Willa Cather (1873–1947) was an American writer best known for her novels of the Plains and for One of Ours, a novel set in World War I, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943 and received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments. By the time of her death she had written twelve novels, five books of short stories, and a collection of poetry.
"I dreamed of New York, I am going there." On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at "the intellectual fashion magazine" Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work—the three words Plath used to describe that time—shows how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life. Thoughtful and illuminating, this captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon—a young woman with everything to live for.
On the Gulls' Road is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in December 1908. On the Gull's Road is a touching memoir of Alexandra Deppling's unrequited love on a ship from Genoa to New York City with Mrs. Ebbling. Despite illness, and a dandy of a husband, their love is indesputable.
First published in 1918, My Ántonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman’s life on the hardscrabble Nebraska plains. Together here with O Pioneers!, a classic American tale of pioneer life and the transformation of the frontier, this volume of Willa Cather’s works captures a time, a place, and a spirit that are part of our national heritage.
Alexandra Bergson is determined to make her family farm successful. Many families, including the family of her friend Karl Linstrum, are leaving to find jobs elsewhere. Alexandra's father wants her to run the family farm despite her brother's protests. Alexandra presents a plan to the family to buy more land and become rich landowners. Her brothers laughed at her, but sixteen years later; Alexandra and her brothers are rich land owners. Will Alexandra and Karl see each other again? Will romance ever blossom for Alexandra? Will Emil ever stop pining after Marie? What does Marie's' husband think of Emil's longing?Follow the life of Thea Kronborg, a woman with a talent for singing. From a young age, Thea has a natural gift in music. At the young age of 15, she becomes a voice teacher to help pay her way. A local doctor and a man who loved Thea, provided money to her in his will to travel from their hometown in Colorado to study music in Chicago, Illinois. Thea become successful in Chicago and dedicates her time to her music. Thea becomes ill and is sent by a friend to Arizona to recover. Fredd Ottenberg joins her in Arizona. They fall in love, but Thea finds out they can never be together. Why? Will Thea become a successful Opera singer? Will she cross the Atlantic Ocean?The story of a boy and a girl that remain lifelong friends. Jim and Antonia meet as children. Jim, an orphan, meets Antonia on a train headed to Nebraska. Jim moves in with his grandparents and helps them on the farm. Antonia's family tries to build a homestead, but it is too much for her father. Antonia learns to care for a home from Jim's grandmother and English from Jim. As Antonia grows up, she becomes a housekeeper and nanny for many families. They are all nice people to work, except for one man. Jim inadvertently helps Antonia from being taken advantage of. Jim leaves for school. Antonia stays in Nebraska. They remain close and write letters to each other. Jim eventually learns that Antonia is in a difficult situation and had to move back with her mother. When Jim returns home years later, Antonia and Jim meet again. Is he happy? Is she happy? What does the future hold?Willa Cather is known for bringing the Midwest and frontier life to readers everywhere. She held jobs as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. She later received a Pulitzer Prize for her novels. Later in life, Cather was criticized for no longer being relevant and only writing stories that romanticized the Great Depression. That did not stop Cather from writing best-selling novels. At the age of 73, in 1947, Cather passed away and was buried in New Hampshire next to her best friend, Edith Lewis.
