Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Literary criticism and analysis for the twentieth-century American novelist and short-story writer Willa Cather. A linked bibliograpy of free academic and educational web sites, peer-reviewed journal articles, and published books.

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century fiction | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com

introduction

The Willa Cather Archive. A rich source of Cather materials, including scholarly editions of Oh Pioneers! and My Ántonia, reliable digital transcriptions of additional Cather editions, and transcriptions of her letters. Also biographies, photos, and access to literary criticism in Cather Studies. From The Willa Cather Archive at the Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln.

My Ántonia. Selected for "The Big Read," Erika Koss, editor. Contents: Readers Guide contains Introduction, Historical Context, About the Author, Other Works, Discussion Questions, Bibliography. Teacher's Guide contains Lesson Plans, Capstone Project Ideas, Essay Topics. Also an audio guide podcast. National Endowment for the Arts.

The Song of the Lark. On the Masterpiece Theatre version of Cather's novel about an opera singer. Contents include contextual articles on opera in America and the settlement of the prairie, also a Willa Cather timeline and a teaching guide. From the Public Broadcasting Service.

O'Connor, Margaret Anne. "Willa Cather." A short introduction to Willa Cather. Also, a brief teaching guide. From the college textbook publisher the Heath Anthology of American Literature.

Rose, Phyllis. "The Point of View Was Masculine." New York Times 11 Sept. 1983.

Thomas, Susan. "Willa Cather." Introduction to Willa Cather at the Literary Encyclopedia, Sept. 2007 [subscription service].

biography

"Biographies." Three biographies at The Willa Cather Archive: A Brief Biographical Sketch (about 500 words), by Amy Ahearn; A Longer Biographical Sketch (about 3000 words), by Amy Ahearn; and Willa Cather: A Literary Life, by James Woodress, complete book (U of Nebraska P, 1987). The Willa Cather Archive at the Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"Willa Cather." The Early Years, 1873-1890; The University of Nebraska, 1890-1895; Journalist and Teacher, Writer and Poet, 1895-1912; Emerging Writer, 1914-1922; Leading American Author, 1922-1933; The Later Years, 1933-1947. Biography by Prof. Robert Thacker at The Willa Cather Foundation.

Bennett, Mildred R. "Catherton." On the town on the Nebraska Divide where Cather's parents first settled before moving on to Red Cloud. Prairie Schooner 23, 3 (Fall 1949) pp 279-87 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Bennett, Mildred R. "The Childhood Worlds Of Willa Cather." Great Plains Quarterly 2, 4 (Fall 1983) pp 204-9 [free].

Brown, E.K.; and Leon Edel. Willa Cather: A Critical Biography (Knopf, 1953). Complete book at the Internet Archive.

Homestead, Melissa; and Anne L. Kaufman. "Nebraska, New England, New York: Mapping the Foreground of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis's Creative Partnership." Digital Commons, University of Nebraska, 1 April 2008.

Fryer, Judith. "What Goes on in the Ladies Room? Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Fields, and Their Community of Women." The Massachusetts Review 30, 4 (Winter 1989) pp 610-28 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Lindemannm Marilee. Willa Cather: Queering America. Discussed by Jeane Harris. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 19, 1 (Spring 2000) pp 148-51 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

"Willa Cather: The Road Is All." Interview with filmmaker Joel Geyer and literary scholar Richard Giannone, who discuss Cather's life and writing in connection with the 2005 documentary on Cather on American Masters. Washington Post 8 Sept. 2005.

"Willa Cather's Scrapbook." Online exhibition of the scrapbook Willa Cather made as a child. Nebraska State Historical Society.

Homesteaders, 1886, in Loup Valley, Nebr. Public domain photo

O Pioneers! (1913): literary criticism

O Pioneers! (Univ. of Nebraska Press 1992). Authoritative text from the Willa Cather Archive, Univ. of Nebraska. Editors Charles Mignon, Susan J. Rosowski, Kathleen Danker, explanatory essays by David Stouck, fully annotated using hyperlinks [free].

Hicks, Granville. "The Case against Willa Cather." The English Journal 22, 9 (Nov. 1933) pp 703-10 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Laegreid, Renee M. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ignored Immigrants in Willa Cather's O Pioneers!." Great Plains Quarterly 27, 2 (Spring 2007) pp 101-15 [free].

Mullins, Maire. "'I Bequeath Myself to the Dirt to Grow from the Grass I Love': The Whitman-Cather Connection in O Pioneers! Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 20, 1 (Spring 2000) pp 123-36 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Stouck, David. "O Pioneers!: Willa Cather and the Epic Imagination." Prairie Schooner 46, 1 (Spring 1972) pp 23-34 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Rosowski, Susan J. "Willa Cather, A Pioneer in Art: O Pioneers! and My Ántonia." Prairie Schooner 55, 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1981) pp 141-54 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

My Ántonia (1918): literary criticism

Giannone, Richard "Music in My Ántonia." Prairie Schooner 55, 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1981) pp 141-54 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Holmes, Catherine D. "Jim Burden's Lost Worlds: Exile in My Ántonia." Twentieth Century Literature 45, 3 (Autumn 1999) pp 336-46 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

Prchal, Tim. "The Bohemian Paradox: My Ántonia and Popular Images of Czech Immigrants." MELUS 29, 2 (Summer 2004) pp 3-25 [jstor preview or purchase].

Other literary criticism

Dolezal, Joshua. "The Fire in the Ash: Dissent and Progressivism in Cather's 'Double Birthday.'" Cather Studies 8 (2010) [articles in Cather Studies are free].

Homestead, Melissa J. "Edith Lewis as Editor, Every Week Magazine, and the Contexts of Cather's Fiction." Cather Studies 8 (2010) [articles in Cather Studies are free].

Murphy, John J. "Cather's 'Two Friends' as a Western 'Out of the Cradle'" [Cather and Walt Whitman]. The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter 31, 3 (Summer 1987) [free, download newsletter and scroll down for article].

Olin-Ammentorp, Julie. "Willa Cather's One of Ours, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front, and the Literature of the Great War." On two novels about World War I. "Cather and Wharton had a strong sense of the importance of writing their war novels, despite the inherent difficulties of taking on, as women writers, what is easily the most masculine of topics." Cather Studies 8 (2010) [articles in Cather Studies are free].

Rosowski, Susan J. "Willa Cather's A Lost Lady: The Paradoxes of Change." NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 11, 1 (Autumn 1977) pp 51-62 [jstor preview or purchase].

Saari, Rob. "'Paul's Case': A Narcissistic Personality Disorder, 301.81." Studies in Short Fiction 34m 3 (Summer 1997) [questia subscription service].

Stouck, David. "Willa Cather and the Russians." On the influence of Russian novelists Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov on Cather. Cather Studies 1 (1990) [articles in Cather Studies are free].

Woidat, Caroline M. "The Indian-Detour in Willa Cather's Southwestern Novels." Twentieth Century Literature 48, 1 (Spring 2002) pp 22-49 [free at jstor, click "Preview" or "Read Online"].

editions

Scholarly edition of My Ántonia (U of Nebraska P 1994). Complete text at the Willa Cather Archive, Univ. of Nebraska.

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century fiction | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com

1998-2014 by LiteraryHistory.com