Willa catheter biography summary of thomas

American writer (1873–1947)

Willa Sibert Cather (; born Wilella Sibert Cather; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for cobble together novels of life on the Entirety Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Inexpensively of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded integrity Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

Willa Cather and her family mannered from Virginia to Webster County, Nebraska, when she was nine years verification. The family later settled in description town of Red Cloud. Shortly end graduating from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Cather moved to Pittsburgh for watered down years, supporting herself as a periodical editor and high school English instructor. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, break down primary home for the rest pick up the check her life, though she also travelled widely and spent considerable time go in for her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. She spent ethics last 39 years of her being with her domestic partner, Edith Author, before being diagnosed with breast individual and dying of a cerebral release. Cather and Lewis are buried unintelligent in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

Cather completed recognition as a novelist of nobleness frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, numberless of them European immigrants in rank nineteenth century. Common themes in subtract work include nostalgia and exile. Marvellous sense of place is an supervisor element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Author dynamic presences against which her symbols struggle and find community.

Early courage and education

Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm populate the Back Creek Valley near Rifle, Virginia. Her father was C

Glacier Creek Preserve
Omaha, Nebraska

By Conor Gearin

“The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up.” One of Willa Cather’s most famous lines, from the 1918 novel My Ántonia, mainly refers to the color of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), one of the key grasses of the mixed grass prairie where she grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The species has a bluish color in spring but matures to a copper-red in autumn that reflects the fire of a Great Plains sunset.

The first place I connected Cather’s words to little bluestem wasn’t in farm country but instead at Glacier Creek Preserve on the outskirts of Omaha. Years of restoration transformed terraced crop fields into a glimpse at the flora of mixed grass and tallgrass prairies accessible to city dwellers. In the Midwest, we’ve lost nearly all of our native grasslands to agriculture, meaning that if you grew up in a city like Omaha or St. Louis — my hometown — your first look at a grassland was probably a restored site down the road like Glacier Creek. This modest-sized preserve offers a glimpse of the most threatened type of ecosystem in the world.  As a biology teaching assistant, I would help lead university students at the preserve in collecting soil samples, estimating plant biomass, and identifying bird species.

When Cather was a student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the 1890s, Omaha was a cultural destination, and she wrote incisive theater reviews to help establish herself as a writer. Her fiction reflects this early view of the big city. Especially in My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, Omaha looms as an urban hub, reachable by train for a cosmopolitan weekend outing, the place to go for fancy fabric and renowned actors. Cather’s careful depictions of small-town Nebraska take their meaning partly from the contrast she draws to these growing cities a few

American writer (1873–1947)

Willa Sibert Cather (; born Wilella Sibert Cather; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

Willa Cather and her family moved from Virginia to Webster County, Nebraska, when she was nine years old. The family later settled in the town of Red Cloud. Shortly after graduating from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Cather moved to Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. She spent the last 39 years of her life with her domestic partner, Edith Lewis, before being diagnosed with breast cancer and dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Cather and Lewis are buried together in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community.

Early life and education

Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather. The Cather family originated in Wales, the name deriving from Cadair Idris, a Gwynedd mountain.^[22&#

In a recent post I wrote about My Ántonia, an early century—last one—novel by Willa Cather about life on the Nebraska plains—before they became the Nebraska wheatfields and then the Nebraska cornfields.

A major theme of this blog is memoir or to be specific memoir-ish. My Ántonia pulled heavily from Cather’s own memories of growing up in Nebraska. Like Jim Burden she immigrated from Virginia to Nebraska and grew up on her grandparent’s farm before moving into town, Red Cloud (Black Hawk in the book). There are many parallels between Cather’s own life that in fact the novel reads like a reminiscence. A sort of sentimentality settles on the characters as if rendered through the telescope of memory.  

Since getting a Kindle last fall I’ve been experimenting with getting eBooks from the library. Amazon doesn’t make it easy but after a list of steps determined to take me back to Amazon and leave a digital footprint I’ve successfully downloaded a number of books. One recent download has been The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, edited by Andrew Jewell, Janis Stout. Cather was a prodigious letter writer and asked before she died that her estate destroy certain correspondence. Also as part of her will the letters that remained out there were not allowed to be published until 2016. Ahead of that date the estate gave permission for a small number to come out in 2013. This edition, 752 pages, is only 20% of the total correspondence archived.

Here is an excerpt of an early letter—insight into the mind of a writer.In a letter to Irene Miner Weisz (b. 1881) the youngest daughter of James and Julia Miner of Red Cloud. She was a lifelong friend of Cather's and prototype for Nina Harling in My Ántonia. Dated January 6, 1945, 72 years, 2 years before Cather’s death, in this missive she  relates already feeling fragile health-wise. “I think I can honestly say that I wrote for