Showing results by author "Willa Cather" in All Categories

From one of the most highly acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century: a truly remarkable book" (The New York Times), an epic story of a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. With a new introduction by Claire Messud. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as...

Orphaned at the age of 10, Jim Burden moves to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. There he meets Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of an immigrant family from Bohemia, who have come to carve out a life for themselves in the harsh and bountiful Nebraskan landscape. At the urging of her father, Jim teaches Ántonia English and together they share adventures that will bind them throughout their lives, despite the vicissitudes of time and fate, and years of separation.

Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia.

A great new collection of classic short fiction, brilliantly read by a selection of narrators. Includes the following stories: "The Lightening-Rod Man" by Herman Melville, "One of the Missing" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Leopard Man's Story" by Jack London, "Tennessee's Partner" by Bret Harte, "The New Catacomb" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, "My Watch" and "The Widow's Protest" by Mark Twain, "An Ideal Family" by Kate Mansfield, "A Painful Case" by James Joyce, "Small Fry" by Anton Chekhov, and more!

In this semiautobiographical portrait of a young artist, Willa Cather takes us into the heart of a woman coming to know her deepest self. Thea Kronborg, a minister’s daughter in a provincial Colorado town, has dreams and gifts that her hometown will not satisfy. With the support of a few allies who recognize her rare qualities, she follows her ambitions to the city, determined to be an opera diva. As she moves through a series of music teachers in Chicago, Thea finds that the attitudes and standards of those around her rarely match her own.

Orphaned at age ten, Jim is traveling west to his grandparents’ home in Black Hawk when he first meets Ántonia, the daughter of a Bohemian family who settles on a neighboring farm. Through sunbaked summers and frigid winters, Ántonia bears the hardships of a young immigrant as she longs for a vanishing past.

Thea Kronberg has a voice that can call down angels and the soul of a Colorado pioneer girl. But as she develops her talents and devotes herself to the life of an artist, she must consider the cost of the creative path she follows. Willa Cather's classic novel is full of the breathtaking beauty of the American frontier and the spirit of the people who live there.

The Prairie Trilogy is a series of three novels centered around life in the Midwest during the late 19th/early 20th centuries by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather. First, in "O Pioneers!," we meet Alexandra Bergson, who inherits the family farm after her father dies and leaves her to care for her three siblings. While many immigrant families are giving up their farms and moving back to the city (or to their home countries), Alexandra decides to try to tough it out on the prairie.

The story of a man who does not want to leave his old study for a new house.

Willa Cather achieved recognition for her novels depicting American life on the prairie frontier.

A lyrical and bittersweet novel of a middle-aged man losing control of his life that's a brilliant study in emotional dislocation and renewal—from one of the most highly acclaimed authors of the twentieth century. Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life...

In "The Song of the Lark," we follow the life of budding artist Thea Kronbog, who rises from complete obscurity in a tiny Colorado town to become a world-renowned opera singer. A fascinating look at life in the early 20th century as well as a deep dive into the life and struggles of a creative artist rising to the top of her profession, "The Song of the Lark" was universally praised for its realism and meticulous depiction of Thea's journey. One of the most important and powerful novels of the early 20th century, "The Song of the Lark" is presented here in its original and unabridged format.

Published in 1915 and set in the 1890s, The Song of the Lark tells the story of Thea Kronberg, a gifted young singer who blazes her way into the world’s greatest opera houses. Thea’s arduous journey begins in Moonstone, Colorado, a burgeoning Western town, where she is one of seven children. Following an artistic awakening at an Arizona canyon, she eventually finds fame as an acclaimed opera singer, performing in Germany and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

Sapphira Dodderidge, a Virginia lady of the 19th century, marries beneath her and becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful slave. One of Cather's later works...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this Century of profound change for women our Atlantic neighbours produced authors of extraordinary ability that dazzled us all with a range of ideas, characters and stories of such magnificence that literature would never be the same again. Genius is written in their names.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" is a masterful work of historical fiction by Willa Cather. Set in the American Southwest in the mid-19th century, the novel tells the story of a young French priest who is sent to establish a Catholic diocese in a rugged and unfamiliar land. Through his encounters with the indigenous people and his fellow settlers, the priest comes to understand the complexities and beauty of the human spirit.

To the people of Sweet Water, a fading railroad town on the Western plains, Mrs. Forrester is the resident aristocrat, at once gracious and comfortably remote. To her aging husband, she is a treasure whose value increases as his powers fail. To Niel Herbert, who falls in love with her as a boy and becomes her confidant as a man, Mrs. Forrester is by turns steadfast and faithless, dazzling and pathetic.

Willa Cather renders the tough inner terrain of a man in mid-life crisis. Bartley Alexander is a master bridge engineer. At 43 he is at the height of his power, comfortable with success and all it brings. Yet he yearns for the lost vibrancy of his youth. He leads a double life, veering between his beautiful, accomplished wife and his mistress, an actress he knew as a student in Paris. The conflict creates a crack in the structure of his life that ultimately undermines him.

Inspired by real-life characters and events, Willa Cather’s historical novel follows the committed efforts of two friends, Bishop Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, to establish a diocese in the newly acquired US territory of New Mexico. Their arduous and picaresque journey is set against a gorgeous landscape of mesas, canyons, and arroyos inhabited by the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo people, the place becoming almost another character itself.