Showing results by author "Willa Cather" in All Categories

My Ántonia chronicles the life of Ántonia, a Bohemian immigrant woman, as seen through the eyes of Jim, the man unable to forget her. Jim, now a successful New York lawyer, recollects his upbringing on a Nebraska farm. Even after twenty years, Ántonia continues to live a romantic life in his imagination. When he returns to Nebraska, he finds Ántonia has lived a battered life and is now abandoned by the very man to whom she dedicated her life.

After the death of his parents, Jim is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. By chance, on the same train is a bright-eyed girl, Antonia, who will become his neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life of farming, but they soon lose their money and must work hard just to survive. Through it all, Antonia retains her natural pride and free spirit.

This story is told from the perspective of Peggy, a teenager in the tiny town of Riverbank. Peggy is good friends with a girl named Nelly Deane. Nelly is considered by many to be the prettiest and most fun-loving girl in town. What happens to Nelly in the ensuing years after Peggy leaves Riverbank for college and then abroad is related through Peggy's infrequent visits back home and the letters she receives from one of the older women of Riverbank.

After studying piano as a child, Thea Kronborg leaves her family and their frontier town of Moonstone, Colorado, to pursue music in Chicago. There, her instructor insists that her singing voice is her greater gift, and she begins to work on mastering her craft. Seeking to become one of the world's greatest opera singers, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and fulfillment that takes her across the world.

O Pioneers! is a classic moving tale of the frontier told in a powerful style and with a strong sense of character. When Alexandra Bergson’s father dies she is left with the responsibility of raising her younger brothers on their father’s unsuccessful farm. Alexandra is deeply involved with life as she meets the demands of laboring on the prairie farm, and wrestling with her conflicting emotions.

In this volume our authors explore the terrors of the mind rather than the horrors of reality, although with their pens the difference makes little difference. We twist this way and that as their talents shape our path towards endings of the nerve-shredding kind.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

Sadness can be about so many things from places to people, from thoughts to actions. Our classic authors including Arnold Bennett, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Ivan Turgenev and many others use their pens and stories to demonstrate the many ways this feeling can take a hold of lives and its consequences.

This century unfolds with a fast-changing world riven by immense wars and glutton hungry Empires. Women strive to win the most basic of rights, the right to vote. Their literary testament is now a vital part of our cultural world. They write on all manner of subjects with truth, with imagination and with undeniable talent. We are all the richer for their words.

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.

When the New Mexico territory is annexed by the United States in the mid-1800's, the Catholic Church decides it is time to re-assert its authority in the region which, due to centuries of neglect, is now a haven for corrupt priests. The Vatican chooses Father Jean Marie Latour, a French Jesuit living in Ohio, to accomplish this task, and soon after elevating him to bishop, sends him on his journey into the Wild West.

My Ántonia relates the story of two young arrivals in Nebraska in the 1880s: Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. Jim is an orphan, traveling to Nebraska to live with his grandparents, while Ántonia is emigrating to Nebraska with her Bohemian parents and siblings. The novel follows the pair as they become fast friends and experience life (and great challenges) on the Western prairie.

Inspired by real-life characters and events, Willa Cather’s historical novel follows the committed efforts of two friends, Bishop Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, to establish a diocese in the newly acquired US territory of New Mexico. Their arduous and picaresque journey is set against a gorgeous landscape of mesas, canyons, and arroyos inhabited by the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo people, the place becoming almost another character itself.

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.

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.

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.

Presented here is Volume IV of our Feminist Literary Classics series, featuring three of the most important feminist works ever written: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather.

"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.

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.

The most romantic literary lovers in history: Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Oliver Mellors and Constance Chatterley. Marie Shabata and Emil Bergson. Now, all three of their classic stories are collected in one volume.