Willa Sibert Cather

Willa Sibert Cather , 1873-1947, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Winchester, Va., considered one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. When she was nine her family moved to the Nebraska prairie frontier. She graduated from the Univ. of Nebraska in 1895 and worked as a journalist and as a teacher in Pittsburgh. In 1904 she went to New York City. The publication of The Troll Garden (1905), her first collection of short stories, led to her appointment to the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. She eventually became managing editor and saved the magazine from financial disaster. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. For many years she lived quietly in New York City's Greenwich Village. The first of her novels to deal with her major theme is O Pioneers! (1913), a celebration of the strength and courage of the frontier settlers. Other novels with this theme are My Ántonia (1918), One of Ours (1922; Pulitzer Prize), and A Lost Lady (1923). The Song of the Lark (1915) focuses on another of Cather's major preoccupations—the need of artists to free themselves from inhibiting influences, particularly that of a rural or small-town background; the tales collected in Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and the novel Lucy Gayheart (1935) also treat this theme. With success and increasing age Cather became convinced that the beliefs and way of life she valued were disappearing. This disillusionment is poignantly evident in her novel The Professor's House (1925). She subsequently turned to North America's far past for her material: to colonial New Mexico in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), widely regarded as her masterpiece, and to 17th-century Quebec for Shadows on the Rock (1931), in both novels blending history with religious reverence and loving characterizations. The volumes My Mortal Enemy (1926) and The Old Beauty and Others (1948) present her highly skilled shorter fiction. Her intense interest in the craft of fiction is shown in the essays in Not Under Forty (1936) and On Writing (1949). Cather herself was a master of that craft, her novels and stories written in a pellucid style of great charm and stateliness.

Bibliography: See E. K. Brown and L. Edel, Willa Cather: A Critical Biography (1980); S. O'Brien, Willa Cather: the Emerging Voice (1987); J. Woodres, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (1989).

Cather, Willa Sibert (1876–1947), American novelist. Her many works include My Ántonia (1918), the story of an immigrant girl from Bohemia, settled in Nebraska; A Lost Lady (1923); The Professor's House (1925), a rich and suggestive work which contrasts the middle-aged disillusion of Professor St Peter with his memories of his favourite student, the brilliant explorer and inventor Tom Outland; Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), a historical novel, set in New Mexico, based on the French Catholic mission of Father Latour, and his years of work with the peasant population. The dual impulse towards exploration and cultivation, towards art and domesticity, towards excitement and safety, is a constant theme in Cather's work; she was a pioneer not only in her treatment of the frontiers of the West, but also in her development of the American novel. She records her own debt to another pioneer, S. O. Jewett, in Not Under Forty (1936).

Cather, Willa [Sibert] (1873–1947), born in Virginia, as a child moved with her family to Nebraska, where she was reared among the immigrants who are the subjects of many of her novels. After graduation from the University of Nebraska (1895), where her study of Latin may have influenced her graceful Virgilian style, and a period of journalism and high‐school teaching, she published a book of poems, April Twilights (1903, enlarged 1923), and a book of short stories, The Troll Garden (1905). She was on the staff of McClure's (1906–12), leaving to devote herself to creative writing after the publication of her first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912), the story of an engineer torn between love for his wife and the woman he had loved during his youth. With O Pioneers! (1913) she turned to the Nebraska prairies to tell of the heroic and creative qualities of the passing frontier. The Song of the Lark (1915) is again a study of a woman's character; and My Antonia (1918), episodic in construction like her other novels, tells of a Bohemian immigrant girl's life on the frontier, and the pioneer strength that preserves her through numerous adversities. One of Ours (1922), which won a Pulitzer Prize although it is not considered to rank with her best work, tells of a young man's escape from his oppressive life on a Midwestern farm to vitalizing experiences as a soldier in France during World War I. A Lost Lady (1923) differs from Miss Cather's previous studies of women in the Middle West in that the heroine's grace, charm, and cultivated taste place her above and apart from the new grasping generation that succeeds the era of pioneers. The Professor's House (1925) is partly the story of an idealistic scholar's adjustment to middle age, and partly that of his favorite student's discovery of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico, the description of which foreshadows the setting of Death Comes for the Archbishop. My Mortal Enemy (1926) is a short novel concerned with a selfish and strong‐willed woman who brings about her own downfall. The author's idealism and love of the past reach a climax in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), her celebration of the spiritual pioneering of the Catholic Church in New Mexico. Catholicism is also at the core of Shadows on the Rock (1931), which deals with 17th‐century Quebec. Lucy Gayheart (1935) is the story of a Midwestern girl who gives up an early love affair to study music, then abandons her career to become the mistress of an egotistical concert singer and meets an accidental death after he deserts her. Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) is a novel based on a story recalled from her Virginia childhood. Obscure Destinies (1932) contains three novelettes set in small communities of the Middle West, and Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) is a volume of stories dealing with the careers of artists. Not Under Forty (1936) is a collection of essays presenting the author's theory of fiction, and describing literary encounters with writers who influenced her, such as Sarah Orne Jewett.