Showing results by author "Willa Cather" in All Categories

Willa Cather was perhaps most famous for her great novels such as My Antonia and Death Comes to the Archbishop. However, her short stories were enchanting and practical, local and cosmopolitan. Of the great American writers of the early part of the twentieth century she stood alone in her vision. No American writer ever had her breadth of experience and knowledge of people and places, relating to farmers in Nebraska, to barons in New York, and artists in Paris.

"Paul's Case" was first published in 1905 in Cather's first collection of short stories, titled The Troll Garden. Similar to "The Enchanted Forest" featured in her Nine Stories published by Simply, it is one of the great writer's stories accessible to most young people in high school and college. It relates to what they feel, think, and want to be. Perhaps just as importantly, it depicts young people upset by their current circumstances, their families, and the drabness they perceive in their own lives.

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

At first glance, 'The Most Dangerous Game’ by Richard Connell, ‘Paul’s Case’ by Willa Cather, and ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ by Henry James have very little in common. In ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ Sanger Rainsford, an accomplished big game hunter, is marooned on a remote island that is inhabited by another big game hunter, General Zaroff, who has found a very twisted way to add thrills to his hunting parties.

This varied assortment of Ms. Cather's gorgeous writing includes: "Flora and Her Artists", "The Sculptor's Funeral", "The Garden Lodge", "A Death in the Desert", "The Marriage of Phaedra", "A Wagner Matinee", and "Paul's Case".

This collection includes "A Singer's Romance", "The Sentimentality of William Tavener", "The Count of Crow's Nest", "A Resurrection", "The Prodigies", and "Nanette: An Aside". These short stories reflect the author's extraordinary human insight.

These stories are a unique, early study of celebrity and the vast emotional and social divisions of class and power that still exist today. Each story introduces a woman of power and the men who struggle to define them and thus themselves.

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

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

Willa Cather's early poem, "April Twilights," serves as a precursor to themes of love and nature that appear in her later novels. This collection also includes poems by poetesses Christina Rossetti, Sarah Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Amy Lowell, as well as a sampling of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Alexander's Bridge was Willa Cather's first novel and one of her best. Bartley Alexander was the world's leading bridge builder, something that was considered an awesome skill in the early 20th century. Alexander has the strength and regret that weave throughout Cather's male characters much as they do through those of her contemporary authors, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dreiser, Anderson, Lewis, and others.

Being an English author in a new and different culture seems to work its magic when these two are placed together in the same spot with a rich vocabulary; ideas seem more fully formed and characters have another edge to their existence. For the outsider looking in, more can be revealed and shared with ourselves.

In the American Civil War that began in 1861 the War was seemingly fought to end Slavery. A War for Good. The result a win for the good guys but a society that still bears fractures from this seminal period. The stories in this volume show the true scars that are endured as a riven Nations authors try to explain and reconcile.

"On the Gulls' Road" is a touching short story by Willa Cather, first published in McClure's in December 1908. A fellow painter visits the narrator, and is mesmerized by his painting of Alexandra Ebbling, a married woman, whom the narrator met on a ship from Genoa to New York City. On the ship, he and Mrs. Ebbling enjoyed many conversations about life, love, and personal experiences. The courtship goes on for the entire trip and grows stronger each day. The man is smitten by Mrs. Ebbling and cannot wait until the next time they meet.

"The Garden Lodge" is a short story by Willa Cather, first published in 1905. It tells the story of a woman asked by her husband if she would agree to tear down their garden lodge and build a new summer house there instead. She grows nostalgic as she remembers spending fond times there with tenor Raymond d'Esquerre when he was visiting. Although a moderate and no-nonsense woman, the singer rekindled her passion for music during his stay.

Willa Sibert Cather had Welsh ancestry but like her parents Charles and Mary, was born in Virginia, on 7th December 1873. Acknowledged as one of America's greatest writers’ further honours flowed. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained.

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud, Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman.

One January day, many years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them.

Christmas may come but once a year but evil, intrigue and malevolence are everyday events. Within this volume Christmas is a time when these dark forces form and coalesce to take life and liberty from people who may and who may not deserve the spin of its wheel. Some are merely evil, others have the beginnings of a conscience that displays itself in a dialogue with the devil, or perhaps only themselves. But, in this volume Christmas takes a ringside seat to the horrors of the human heart.

When we read or listen, words can have a transforming effect. Our mood can alter in the space of a few sentences from joy to sadness. And not just our mood. These words can affect us physically, they can engage our emotions and even in their sadness bring a lump to our throat and tears to our eyes. Sometimes the relief can be palpable. Our authors, from Anton Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Katherine Mansfield and a wealth of others, are well aware of what their talents will evoke. Genius has many names.