Wila Cather was probably born in Virginia in 1873, although her parents did not register the date, and it is probably incorrectly given on her tombstone. Because she is so famous for her Nebraska novels, many people assume she was born there, but Wila Cather was about nine years old when her family moved to a small Nebraska frontier town called Red Cloud that was populated by immigrant Swedes, Bohemians, Germans, Poles, Czechs, and Russians. The oldest of seven children, she was educated at home, studied with a Latin neighbor, and read the English classics in the evening. By the time... Read More

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(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Introduction by A. S. Byatt

Willa Cather’s story of the missionary priest Father Jean Marie Latour and his work of faith in the wilderness of the Southwest is told with a spare but sensuous directness and profound artistry. When Latour arrives in 1851 in the territory of New Mexico... Read more

Willa Cather's best known novel; a narrative that recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. Read more

Marian Forrester ist schoen, charmant und von den Maennern begehrt. Doch an der Seite ihres fuenfundzwanzig Jahre aelteren Gatten fuehrt sie ein in Konventionen erstarrtes Schattendasein. Bis eines Tages ihr ganzes Leben erschuettert wird und sie beginnt, alle gesellschaftlichen Bindungen abzustreifen. Was ihrer Umgebung als suspekt und verworfen erscheint, bedeutet fuer... Read more

A portrait of a woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them and whose transformations embody the decline and coarsening of the American frontier. Read more

Lucy Gayheart ist achtzehn, einen temperamentvolle junge Frau voller Charme und Vitalitaet und eine gute Pianistin. Als das Leben in dem Provinzstaedtchen Haverford sie zu ersticken droht, flieht sie nach Chicago, um dort Musik zu studieren. Doch sie ist nicht zur Kuenstlerin geboren, denn fuer eine grosse Karriere fehlt es ihr... Read more

"Some people's lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property, but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts—that and nothing more." In this haunting 1935 novel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop performs a series... Read more

Antonia Shimerda, ein junges aufgewecktes Maedchen, kommt um 1880 mit ihrer boehmischen Familie nach Nebraska. Schon bald verlangt ihr das Leben in der Praerie die ganze Kraft ihrer Jugend ab. Kaum dem Kindesalter entwachsen, muss sie zum Familienunterhalt beitragen, um sich einen Platz im Dasein zu erkaempfen. Nur eines laesst sie... Read more

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Of Ántonia, the passionate and majestic central character in Willa Cather’s greatest novel, the narrator, Jim Burden, says that she left “images in the mind that did not fade–that grew stronger with time.” The same is true of the book in which Cather enshrines her heroine. On one... Read more

In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction. Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants, not only survives her father's suicide, poverty, and a failed romance, she triumphs with high spirits. Read more

"The best thing I've done is My Antonia," recalled Willa Cather. "I feel I've made a contribution to American letters with that book."

Ántonia Shimerda returns to Black Hawk, Nebraska, to make a fresh start after eloping with a railway conductor following the tragic death of her father. Accustomed to living in... Read more

'The best thing I've done is My Antonia,' recalled Willa Cather. 'I feel I've made a contribution to American letters with that book.' Set against the vast Nebraska prairie, Cather's elegiac novel features one of the most winning heroines in American fiction—Antonia Shimerda—a young woman whose strength and passion epitomize the... Read more

In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction. Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants, not only survives her father's suicide, poverty, and a failed romance, she triumphs with high spirits.


From the Trade Paperback edition. Read more

First published in 1926, this book is Cather's sparest and most dramatic novel, a dark and oddly prescient portrait of a marriage that subverts our oldest notions about the nature of happiness and the sanctity of the hearth. Read more

One of America’s greatest women writers, Willa Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel—the first of her books set on the Nebraska frontier. A tale of the prairie land encountered by America’s Swedish, Czech, Bohemian, and French immigrants, as well as a story of how the land... Read more

One of America’s greatest women writers, Willa Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel—the first of her books set on the Nebraska frontier. A tale of the prairie land encountered by America’s Swedish, Czech, Bohemian, and French immigrants, as well as a story of how the land... Read more

One of America’s greatest women writers, Willa Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel—the first of her books set on the Nebraska frontier. A tale of the prairie land encountered by America’s Swedish, Czech, Bohemian, and French immigrants, as well as a story of how the land... Read more

Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldier

Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father... Read more

A study in emotional dislocation and renewal--Professor Godfrey St. Peter, a man in his 50's, has achieved what would seem to be remarkable success. When called on to move to a more comfortable home, something in him rebels. Read more

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. Read more

"Aus der Sicht von heute liest sich "Sapphira und die Sklavin" als ein historisches Dokument—mehr noch als zur Zeit des Erscheinens, 1940, als in den amerikanischen Suedstaaten immerhin noch strenge Rassentrennung herrschte. Doch schon damals sah die Kritik in dem Roman die Wiedergabe einer Gesellschaft, Kultur und Soziologie, in der ein... Read more

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"The time will come when she will be ranked above Hemingway." --Leon Edel


In this powerful portrait of the self-making of an artist, Willa Cather created one of her most extraordinary heroines. Thea Kronborg, a minister's daughter in a provincial Colorado town, seems destined from childhood for a place in the wider... Read more

A classic American writer in every sense, Willa Cather enjoyed both critical and commercial success in her long career, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours. Her beloved and enduring novels and stories have long been part of the canon of world literature, and the characters she created... Read more

Sarah Orne Jewett's place in American letters was assured when this acclaimed collection of stories about her native state of Maine was first published in 1896. Her crisp style and skillful observation of people and places gives her work lasting appeal. Read more