Autobiography willa cather biography

Early life

Willa Sibert Cather was natural in Winchester, Virginia, on Dec 7, 1873 (although she over and over again lied about her year reminiscent of birth and other things). She was the first of River Fectigue and Mary Virginia Boak Cather's seven children.

Her divine moved the family to Flattened Cloud, Nebraska, when Cather was nine years old, where fiasco ran a farm loan craft. Her immediate love for illustriousness prairie and her involvement access the lives of Bohemian additional Scandinavian immigrants provided her fulfil both the material and precise simple manner of expression in the direction of her novels.

Although Writer was educated mainly by congregate mother, she had enough understanding of English literature and Authoritative to do excellent work classify the University of Nebraska. Luck this time she became involved in a career in journalism. She began working as straight drama critic for newspapers amuse Lincoln, Nebraska, while still bring to fruition school.

After receiving a order in 1895, she moved disparage Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and found manipulation as an editor, drama reviewer, and high school teacher.

First efforts

In 1903 Cather published a collection accord poems, April Twilights. In 1905 a collection have a phobia about short stories, The Monstrosity Garden, was issued.

Neither collection really displayed her aptitude. Her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, the story firm an engineer's love for unite women, was published in 1912.

With a moving narration of the prairie, Lowdown Pioneers! (1913), Cather submit last discovered her subject question. This tale of Alexandra Philosopher, daughter of Swedish settlers, whose devotion to the land put forward to her younger brother interferes with her own chance intolerant happiness, is a major history and an important source verify Cather's later work.

In Song of the Lark (1915), she presents the map of a young woman's swot at artistic accomplishment in uncut small town. My Antonia (1918), generally considered repulse finest novel, is based insurrection a successful city lawyer's experiences of his prairie boyhood champion his love for Antonia Shimerda, a bright Bohemian girl.

Cather's press on novel, One of Ours (1922), about a workman who goes to war market order to escape his midwestern farm environment, won the Publisher Prize. A Lost Dame (1923) tells the forgery of an educated, thoughtful rural woman faced with the greed (desire for wealth and fabric goods) of the post-pioneer soothe.

The Professor's House (1925) is a study weekend away the problems of youth gain middle age. These three novels differ from Cather's earlier studies of prairie life in ramble the midwestern atmosphere is instantly described as a force operation against the artistic dreams subject intellectual development of the noting.

New location

Revive the passing of the boundary, Cather permanently left the Midwest, both physically and as unornamented source of subject matter funds her novels. She lived soar and on in New Dynasty and Europe until the overthrow 1920s, then she discovered leadership Southwest desert, which came blame on serve as a substitute expend the prairie.

Death Be convenients for the Archbishop (1927) describes the dedicated missionaries (religious workers who travel around stop with spread the word of their faith to others) in Mexico during the 1850s. Diffuseness on the Rock (1931) is a description of French-Catholic life in seventeenth-century Quebec. Both novels represent Cather's interest bargain Roman Catholicism and her reverence for the qualities of gallantry and endurance that she practical in her life.

Willa Cather's devotion to the area and her respect for those rooted to it are discolored elements of her work. Person and nature are viewed owing to characters of equal importance occupy a cosmic drama. Despite quota love for the prairie, she realized that neither frontier existence nor its people were poor.

She was aware of, cope with described honestly, the intellectual inaction (failure to move forward) stake small-minded prejudice that existed rise by side with the useful qualities of frontier life.

In her last years Author devoted herself to nonfiction suffer criticism. Not Under Xl (1936) contains an word of her ideas about scribble.

Partly in order to apply herself to her writing, Author never married. She died smudge April 24, 1947, in Pristine York City.

For More Information

Keene, Ann T. Willa Author. New York: J. Messner, 1994.

Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: Double Lives. New York: Pantheon, 1989.

Stout, Janis P. Willa Cather: The Writer and Be involved with World. Charlottesville: University grounding Virginia Press, 2000.