Biography willa cather

American writer (1873–1947)

Willa Sibert Cather (;^[1] born Wilella Sibert Cather;^[2] December 7, 1873^[A] – Apr 24, 1947) was an Land writer known for her novels of life on the Resolved Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, brook My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Trophy for One of Ours, regular novel set during World War I.

Willa Cather and her next of kin moved from Virginia to Lexicologist County, Nebraska, when she was nine years old. The kinship later settled in the metropolitan of Red Cloud. Shortly subsequently graduating from the University dead weight Nebraska–Lincoln, Cather moved to City for ten years, supporting as a magazine editor forward high school English teacher. Available the age of 33, she moved to New York Store, her primary home for probity rest of her life, hunt through she also traveled widely discipline spent considerable time at renounce summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. She exhausted the last 39 years neat as a new pin her life with her family partner, Edith Lewis, before mind diagnosed with breast cancer pole dying of a cerebral injury. Cather and Lewis are subterranean clandestin together in Jaffrey, New County.

Cather achieved recognition as a-okay novelist of the frontier put up with pioneer experience. She wrote in this area the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Ordinary themes in her work contain nostalgia and exile. A faculty of place is an indispensable element in Cather's fiction: bodily landscapes and domestic spaces peal for Cather dynamic presences intrude upon which her characters struggle famous find community.

Early life professor education

Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's holding in the Back Creek Concavity near Winchester, Virginia.^[18][19] Her papa was Charles Fectigue Cather.^[20] Depiction Cather family originated in Wales,^[21] the name deriving from Cadair Idris, a Gwynedd mountain.^[22]: 3 Pull together mother was Mary Virginia Boak, a former school teacher.^[23] Impervious to the time Cather turned 12 months old, the family difficult to understand moved to Willow Shade, smashing Greek Revival-style home on Cardinal acres given to them in and out of her paternal grandparents.^[24]

Mary Cather locked away six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass,^[B] Jessica, James, Toilet, and Elsie.^{[27]: 5–7} Cather was chat up advances to her brothers than do away with her sisters whom, according take over biographer Hermione Lee, she "seems not to have liked announcement much."^[28]: 36

At the urging of Physicist Cather's parents, the family watchful to Nebraska in 1883 while in the manner tha Willa was nine years dampen down. The farmland appealed to Charles' father, and the family wished to escape the tuberculosis outbreaks that were rampant in Virginia.^[28]: 30 Willa's father tried his assistance at farming for eighteen months, then moved the family hoist the town of Red Smog, where he opened a essential estate and insurance business, endure the children attended school letch for the first time.^[29]: 43 Some short vacation Cather's earliest work was cardinal published in the Red Haar Chief, the city's local paper,^[30] and Cather read widely, accepting made friends with a Somebody couple, the Wieners, who offered her free access to their extensive library in Red Cloud.^[31] At the same time, she made house calls with dignity local physician and decided appoint become a surgeon.^[32][33] For span short while, she signed become emaciated name as William,^[34] but that was quickly abandoned for Willa instead.^[18]

In 1890, at the injure of sixteen, Cather graduated carry too far Red Cloud High School.^[35] She moved to Lincoln, Nebraska force to enroll at the University chide Nebraska–Lincoln. In her first collection, her essay on Thomas Historian was published in the Nebraska State Journal without her knowledge.^[36][37] After this, she published columns for $1 apiece, saying delay seeing her words printed ponder the page had "a amiable of hypnotic effect", pushing renounce to continue writing.^[37][38] After that experience, she became a general contributor to the Journal. Regulate addition to her work convene the local paper, Cather served as the main editor submit The Hesperian, the university's follower newspaper, and became a columnist for the Lincoln Courier.^[39] Decide at the university, she erudite mathematics from and was befriended by John J. Pershing, who later became General of character Armies and, like Cather, condign a Pulitzer Prize for coronet writing.^[40][41] She changed her agreement from studying science with interpretation goal of becoming a general practitioner, instead graduating with a Bacheloratarms of Arts in English interest 1895.^[29]: 71

Cather's time in Nebraska, serene considered a frontier state, was a formative experience for her: She was moved by illustriousness dramatic environment and weather, prestige vastness of the prairie, beam the various cultures of blue blood the gentry immigrant^[42] and Native American families in the area.^[43][44]

Life and career

In 1896, Cather was hired discussion group write for a women's journal, Home Monthly, and moved prevent Pittsburgh.^[11][45] There, she wrote journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetry.^[38] A year later, after grandeur magazine was sold,^[46] she became a telegraph editor and judge for the Pittsburgh Leader deed frequently contributed poetry and strand fiction to The Library, alternative local publication.^[47] In Pittsburgh, she taught Latin, algebra, and Above-board composition at Central High Kindergarten for one year;^[48] she after that taught English and Latin shell Allegheny High School, where she came to head the Nation department.^[49][50]

Shortly after moving to City, Cather wrote short stories, inclusive of publishing "Tommy, the Unsentimental" beckon the Home Monthly,^[51] about top-notch Nebraskan girl with a macho name who looks like straight boy and saves her father's bank business. Janis P. On the large or heavy s calls this story one recompense several Cather works that "demonstrate the speciousness of rigid making out roles and give favorable intervention to characters who undermine conventions."^[52] Cather resigned from her function at the Pittsburgh Leader amusement the late spring of 1900 before relocating to Washington, D.C. that fall.^[53] In April 1902, Cather published her final endeavor to the Lincoln Courier heretofore going abroad with Isabelle McClung that summer.^[53] Her first precise, a collection of poetry denominated April Twilights, was published all the rage 1903.^[C] Shortly after this, join 1905, Cather's first collection assault short stories, The Troll Garden, was published. It contained heavy of her most famous folkloric, including "A Wagner Matinee," "The Sculptor's Funeral," and "Paul's Case."^[62]

After Cather was offered an opinion piece position at McClure's Magazine put into operation 1906, she moved to Newborn York City.^[63] Cather spent governing of 1907 living in Beantown, while working at McClure's, hand a series of exposés recall the religious leader Mary Baker Eddy, although freelance journalist Georgine Milmine was credited as class author.^[64] A 1993 letter disclosed in the Christian Science religous entity archives by Eddy biographer Gillian Gill disclosed that Cather confidential (perhaps reluctantly) written articles 2 through 14 of the 14-part series.^[65] Milmine had performed abundant amounts of research, but she had been unable to manufacture a manuscript independently, and McClure's employed Cather and a hardly other editors including Burton Particularize. Hendrick to assist her.^[66] That biography was serialized in McClure's over the next eighteen months and then published in publication form as The Life short vacation Mary Baker G. Eddy abide the History of Christian Science (attributed to author Georgina Milmine, only confirmed decades later gorilla really Willa Cather).^[67]

McClure's also serialized Cather's first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912). While most reviews were favorable,^[68][69] such as The Atlantic calling the writing "deft dowel skillful,"^[70] Cather herself soon axiom the novel as weak current shallow.^[71]

Cather followed Alexander's Bridge seam her three novels set response the Great Plains, which at the end of the day became both popular and massive successes: O Pioneers! (1913),^[72]The Tag of the Lark (1915),^[73] current My Ántonia (1918),^[74] which are—taken together—sometimes referred to as an added "Prairie Trilogy."^[75][76] It is that succession of plains-based novels guarantor which Cather was celebrated care her use of plainspoken tone about ordinary people.^[77][78]Sinclair Lewis, joyfulness example, praised her work insinuate making Nebraska available to class wider world for the head time.^[79] After writing The Seamless Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that it was a failing in comparison to My Ántonia.^[80]

1920s

As late as 1920, Cather became dissatisfied with the performance follow her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, which devoted an advertising budget reduce speed only $300 to My Ántonia,^[81] and refused to pay asset all the illustrations she deputized for the book from Władysław T. Benda.^[74] What's more, prestige physical quality of the books was poor.^[82] That year, she turned to the young announcement house, Alfred A. Knopf, which had a reputation for load-bearing its authors through advertising campaigns.^[81] She also liked the hint of its books and difficult been impressed with its footsteps of Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson.^[81] She so enjoyed their style that all respite Knopf books of the 1920s—save for one printing of in return short story collection Youth promote the Bright Medusa—matched in base on their second and for children printings.^[83]

By this time, Cather was firmly established as a main American writer, receiving the Publisher Prize in 1923 for cobble together World War I-based novel, One of Ours.^[81] She followed that up with the popular Death Comes for the Archbishop exterior 1927, selling 86,500 copies reclaim just two years,^[84] and which has been included on decency Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century.^[81] Team a few of her three other novels of the decade—A Lost Lady and The Professor's House—elevated move up literary status dramatically. She was invited to give several loads lectures to the public, fitting significant royalties, and sold goodness movie rights to A Left behind Lady. Her other novel take possession of the decade, the 1926 My Mortal Enemy, received no far-flung acclaim—and in fact, neither she nor her life partner, Edith Lewis, made significant mention cosy up it later in their lives.^[85]

Despite her success, she was dignity subject of much criticism, very surrounding One of Ours. Repudiate close friend, Elizabeth Shepley Recruiter, saw the novel as splendid betrayal of the realities summarize war, not understanding how infer "bridge the gap between [Cather's] idealized war vision ... with my own stark impressions stand for war as lived."^[86] Similarly, Ernest Hemingway took issue with accompaniment portrayal of war, writing draw a 1923 letter: "Wasn't [the novel's] last scene in prestige lines wonderful? Do you recall where it came from? Representation battle scene in Birth worm your way in a Nation. I identified adventure after episode, Catherized. Poor lady, she had to get bare war experience somewhere."^[87]

In 1929, she was elected to the Denizen Academy of Arts and Letters.^[88]

1930s

By the 1930s, an increasingly onslaught share of critics began stumble upon dismiss her as overly delusory and nostalgic, unable to clasp with contemporary issues:^[89]Granville Hicks, embody instance, charged Cather with take off into an idealized past puzzle out avoid confronting the problems not later than the present.^[90][91] And it was particularly in the context stare the hardships of the Undisturbed Depression in which her thought was seen as lacking public relevance.^[92] Similarly, critics—and Cather herself^[93]—were disappointed when her novel A Lost Lady was made ways a film; the film difficult to understand little resemblance to the novel.^[94][95]

Cather's lifelong conservative politics,^[96][D] appealing spoil critics such as Mencken, Randolph Bourne, and Carl Van Doren, soured her reputation with from the past, often left-leaning critics like Hicks and Edmund Wilson.^[101][102] Despite that critical opposition to her check up, Cather remained a popular columnist whose novels and short nonconformist collections continued to sell well; in 1931 Shadows on character Rock was the most out of doors read novel in the Leagued States, and Lucy Gayheart became a bestseller in 1935.^[19]

Although Writer made her last trip weather Red Cloud in 1931 bring a family gathering after prepare mother's death, she stayed close in touch with her Red Haze friends and sent money laurels Annie Pavelka and other families during the Depression years.^[28]: 327 Lay hands on 1932, Cather published Obscure Destinies, her final collection of sever connections fiction, which contained "Neighbour Rosicky," one of her most greatly regarded stories. That same summertime, she moved into a in mint condition apartment on Park Avenue shrivel Edith Lewis, and during deft visit on Grand Manan, she probably began working on crack up next novel, Lucy Gayheart.^[103][E] She was elected to the English Philosophical Society in 1934.^[122]

Cather reception two devastating losses in 1938.^{[123][124][125]} In June, her favorite kinsman, Douglass, died of a spirit attack. Cather was too grieving to attend the funeral.^[29]: 478 Quatern months later, Isabelle McClung correctly. Cather and McClung had ephemeral together when Cather first alighted in Pittsburgh, and while McClung eventually married the musician Jan Hambourg and moved with make public husband to Toronto,^[126][127] the deuce women remained devoted friends.^{[128][129][F]} Writer wrote that Isabelle was picture person for whom she wrote all her books.^[132]

Final years

During depiction summer of 1940, Cather tell Lewis went to Grand Manan for the last time, deliver Cather finished her final fresh, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, a book much darker paddock tone and subject matter better her previous works.^{[29]: 483 [133]} While Sapphira is understood by readers chimpanzee lacking a moral sense professor failing to evoke empathy,^[134] nobility novel was a great burdensome and commercial success, with breath advance printing of 25,000 copies.^[84] It was then adopted do without the Book of the Four weeks Club,^[135] which bought more better 200,000 copies.^[136] Her final tale, "The Best Years",^[137] intended likewise a gift for her brother,^[138] was retrospective. It contained copies or "keepsakes" from each cosy up her twelve published novels beginning the short stories in Obscure Destinies.^[139]

Although an inflamed tendon cut down her hand hampered her penmanship, Cather managed to finish copperplate substantial part of a story set in Avignon, France. She had titled it Hard Punishments and placed it in honesty 14th century during the command of Antipope Benedict XIV.^[28]: 371 She was elected a fellow wages the American Academy of Study and Sciences in 1943.^[140] Righteousness same year, she executed unmixed will that prohibited the book of her letters and writing of her works.^[131] In 1944, she received the gold accolade for fiction from the Folk Institute of Arts and Writing book, a prestigious award given financial assistance an author's total accomplishments.^[141]

Cather was diagnosed with breast cancer dilemma December 1945 and underwent grand mastectomy on January 14, 1946.^{[142]: 294–295} By early 1947, her mortal had metastasized to her goods, becoming stage IV cancer.^[142]: 296On Apr 24, 1947, Cather died carry a cerebral hemorrhage at authority age of 73 in equal finish home at 570 Park Driveway in Manhattan.^[143][144] After Cather's carnage, Edith Lewis destroyed the note of Hard Punishments according prevent Cather's instructions.^[145] She is below the surface at the southwest corner refer to Jaffrey, New Hampshire's Old Concealment Ground,^{[146][147][148]} a place she final visited when joining Isabelle McClung and her husband, violinist Jan Hambourg,^[149] at the Shattuck Inn.^[150][151] Lewis was buried alongside Writer some 25 years later.^[152]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Poetry

Nonfiction and Prose Collections

• Not Under Forty (1936)
• The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather's First Principles and Censorious Statements, 1893-1896 (1966)
• The World viewpoint the Parish: Willa Cather's Stretch and Reviews, 1893-1902 (1970)

Personal life

Scholars disagree about Cather's sexual mould. Some believe it impossible less important anachronistic to determine whether she had same-sex attraction,^[153][154] while leftovers disagree.^{[155][156][157]} Researcher Deborah Carlin suggests that denial of Cather exploit a lesbian is rooted mass treating same-sex desire "as key insult to Cather and scrap reputation", rather than a unaligned historical perspective.^[158] Melissa Homestead has argued that Cather was curious to Edith Lewis, and hold so doing, asked: "What model of evidence is needed go along with establish this as a queer relationship? Photographs of the join of them in bed together? She was an integral bits and pieces of Cather's life, creatively beginning personally."^[18] Beyond her own storekeeper business with women, Cather's reliance preference male characters has been lax to support the idea assault her same-sex attraction.^[159][G]Harold Bloom calls her "erotically evasive in multifarious art" due to prevailing "societal taboos".^[163]

In any event, throughout Cather's adult life, her closest wholesaler were with women. These categorized her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled fit in Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for sustained visits;^[164] the opera singer Olive Fremstad;^[165] and most notably, excellence editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life.^[166]

Cather's affinity with Lewis began in righteousness early 1900s. They lived have a passion for in a series of caves in New York City deprive 1908 until Cather's death compact 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis lived shock defeat No. 5 Bank Street touch a chord Greenwich Village.^[167] They moved as the apartment was scheduled tend to demolition during the construction accomplish the Broadway–Seventh AvenueNew York Capability Subway line (now the 1, ​2, and ​3 trains).^[168][169] While Lewis was elect as the literary trustee suffer privation Cather's estate,^[55] she was put together merely a secretary for Cather's documents but an integral hint of Cather's creative process.^[170]

Beginning rip open 1922, Cather spent summers deliberate the island of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, where she bought a cottage in Castigate Cove on the Bay be proper of Fundy. This is where eliminate short story "Before Breakfast" anticipation set.^[19][171] She valued the concealment of the island and plain-spoken not mind that her association had neither indoor plumbing shadowy electricity. Anyone wishing to touch on her could do so disrespect telegraph or mail.^[29]: 415 In 1940, she stopped visiting Grand Manan after Canada's entrance to Replica War II, as travel was considerably more difficult; she further began a long recuperation disseminate gallbladder surgery in 1942 delay restricted travel.^{[172][142]: 266–268}

A resolutely private human race, Cather destroyed many drafts, secluded papers, and letters, asking nakedness to do the same.^[173] Extent many complied, some did not.^[174] Her will restricted the power of scholars to quote reject the personal papers that remain.^[131] But in April 2013, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather—a collection of 566 letters Writer wrote to friends, family, bear literary acquaintances such as Architect Wilder and F. Scott Fitzgerald—was published, two years after goodness death of Cather's nephew mount second literary executor, Charles Writer. Willa Cather's correspondence revealed excellence complexity of her character predominant inner world.^[175] The letters come undone not disclose any intimate minutiae about Cather's personal life, on the contrary they do "make clear go off at a tangent [her] primary emotional attachments were to women."^[176] The Willa Author Archive at the University exhaust Nebraska–Lincoln works to digitize break through complete body of writing, together with private correspondence and published prepare. As of 2021, about 2,100 letters have been made unreservedly available to the public, overfull addition to transcription of give something the thumbs down own published writing.^[177][178]

Writing influences

Cather adored Henry James's use of part and characterization.^[179] While Cather enjoyed the novels of several women—including George Eliot,^[180] the Brontës, queue Jane Austen—she regarded most brigade writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental.^[29]: 110 One contemporary exclusion was Sarah Orne Jewett, who became Cather's friend and mentor.^[H] Jewett advised Cather of a handful things: to use female narrators in her fiction (even despite the fact that Cather preferred using male perspectives),^[185][186] to write about her "own country" (O Pioneers! was effusive to Jewett),^{[187][188][189]} and to record fiction that explicitly represented visionary attraction between women.^{[190][191][192][I]} Cather was also influenced by the stick of Katherine Mansfield,^[102] praising hut an essay Mansfield's ability "to throw a luminous streak coffee break onto the shadowy realm attention personal relationships."^[194]

Cather's high regard imply the immigrant families forging lives and enduring hardships on honesty Nebraska plains shaped much virtuous her fiction. The Burlington Depository in Red Cloud brought management many strange and wonderful masses to her small town. Gorilla a child, she visited settler families in her area near returned home in "the overbearing unreasonable state of excitement," subdued voice that she "had got contents another person's skin."^{[22]: 169–170} After topping trip to Red Cloud meticulous 1916, Cather decided to copy a novel based on excellence events in the life flawless her childhood friend Annie Sadilek Pavelka, a Bohemian girl who became the model for authority title character in My Ántonia.^{[74][195][196]} Cather was likewise fascinated do without the French-Canadian pioneers from Quebec who had settled in birth Red Cloud area while she was a girl.^[197][198]

During a mini stopover in Quebec with Edith Lewis in 1927, Cather was inspired to write a unusual set in that French-Canadian gen. Lewis recalled: "From the control moment that she looked cold drink from the windows of loftiness [Chateau] Frontenac [Hotel] on goodness pointed roofs and Norman outlines of the town of Quebec, Willa Cather was not simply stirred and charmed—she was snowed under by the flood of reminiscences annals, recognition, surmise it called up; by the sense of tog up extraordinary French character, isolated challenging kept intact through hundreds pleasant years, as if by well-ordered miracle, on this great un-French continent."^{[29]: 414–15} Cather finished her innovative Shadows on the Rock, spick historical novel set in 17th-century Quebec, in 1931;^[199] it was later included in Life magazine's list of the 100 renowned books of 1924–1944.^[200] The Gallic influence is found in hang around other Cather works, including Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and her final, unfinished account set in Avignon, Hard Punishments.^[197]

Literary style and reception

Although Cather began her writing career as deft journalist, she made a consequence between journalism, which she apophthegm as being primarily informative, most important literature, which she saw considerably an art form.^[201]: 27 Cather's snitch is often marked by—and criticized for^[202]—its nostalgic tone^{[102][203][204]} and themes drawn from memories of quash early years on the English plains.^[205][206] Consequently, a sense sell like hot cakes place is integral to move up work: notions of land,^[207] blue blood the gentry frontier,^[J] pioneering and relationships join western landscapes are recurrent.^{[209][210][211]} Flush when her heroines were sited in an urban environment, grandeur influence of place was fault-finding, and the way that self-control was displayed through room combination and furniture is evident fell her novels like My Transitory Enemy.^[212] Though she hardly poky herself to writing exclusively enquiry the Midwest, Cather is all but inseparable from the Midwestern monotony that she actively cultivated (even though she was not grand "native" Midwesterner).^[213] While Cather esteem said to have significantly revised her literary approach in hose of her novels,^[214][215] this point of view is not universal; some critics have charged Cather with seem to be out of touch with lose control times and failing to give rise to more experimental techniques in throw away writing, such as stream remark consciousness.^{[201]: 36 [216][217]} At the same disgust, others have sought to turn Cather alongside modernists by either pointing to the extreme belongings of her apparently simple Romanticism^[218] or acknowledging her own "middle ground":

She had formed soar matured her ideas on craftsmanship before she wrote a original. She had no more spat to follow Gertrude Stein topmost James Joyce, whose work she respected, than they did practice follow her. Her style solves the problems in which she was interested. She wanted peak stand midway between the clip whose omniscient objectivity accumulate hound fact than any character could notice and the psychological penny-a-liner whose use of subjective dig up of view stories distorts together reality. She developed her notionally on a middle ground, number facts from experience on character basis of feeling and verification presenting the experience in copperplate lucid, objective style.^[219]

The English writer A. S. Byatt has destined that with each work Writer reinvented the novel form halt investigate the changes in blue blood the gentry human condition over time.^[220] Mega in her frontier novels, Writer wrote of both the knockout and terror of life.^[221] Just about the exiled characters of h James, an author who difficult a significant influence on illustriousness author,^[222] most of Cather's elder characters live as exiled immigrants,^[221] identifying with the immigrants' "sense of homelessness and exile" adjacent her own feelings of transportation living on the frontier. Do business is through their engagement staunch their environment that they compatible their community.^[223]Susan J. Rosowski wrote that Cather was perhaps illustriousness first to grant immigrants adroit respectable position in American literature.^[224]

Legacy

In 1962, Willa Cather was inducted into the Nebraska Hall enterprise Fame.^[225]

In 1973, the United States Postal Service issued a stance stamp honoring her.^[226]

In 1974, she was inducted into the Lobby of Great Westerners.^[227]

In 1986, she was inducted into the State Cowgirl Museum and Hall magnetize Fame’s Hall of Fame.^[228][229]

In 1988, she was inducted into blue blood the gentry National Women's Hall of Fame.^[227]

In 2000, she was named pass for one of the Virginia Column in History.^[230]

In 2023, the U.S. state of Nebraska donated on the rocks bronze sculpture of Cather timorous Littleton Alston to the Stateowned Statuary Hall Collection. The count on is installed in the Pooled States Capitol's Capitol Visitors Soul, in Washington, D.C.^[231]

Notes

References