Description

Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947) was an American writer acclaimed for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set partly in Nebraska and partly in France during WWI. Her family relocated from Virgina to Nebraska in 1883 and Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a BA in English in 1894. She moved to Pittsburgh in 1896, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. In 1906 the offer of an editorial position on McClure's Magazine prompted her move to New York City which became her primary home for the rest of her life, though she travelled widely and spent much time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. Her first collection of stories The Troll Garden had been published by McClure, Phillips & Co in 1905, and McClure's serialised her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, prior to book publication in 1913. Cather followed this with the three novels set on the prairie named above which became both popular and critical successes. The award of the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours cemented her position as a major American writer and her next novel Death Comes to the Archbishop (1928) was included on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th century.