The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
Willa Cather
Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873– April 24, 1947) is an eminent author who grew up in the state of Nebraska in the United States. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather was born on a small farm in Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia.
In 1883, Cather moved with her family to Catherton in Webster County, Nebraska. The following year the family relocated to Red Cloud, the county seat. Cather spent the rest of her childhood in the town which she made famous by her writing. Willa Cather insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money for her to enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
While in college, Cather became a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal. Cather then moved to Pittsburgh, where she taught high school English and worked for Home Monthly. After receiving a job offer from McClure's Magazine, she moved to New York City for her career. McClure's Magazine serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, a work heavily influenced by Henry James.
Cather moved to New York City in 1906 to join the editorial staff of McClure's and in 1908 was promoted to managing editor. As a journalist, she co-authored a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. It was serialized in McClure's in 1907-8 and published as a book the next year. Christian Scientists were outraged and tried to buy every copy. The work was reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1993.
In New York Cather met a variety of authors. Sarah Orne Jewett advised her to rely less on the influence of James and more on her own experiences in Nebraska. For her novels Cather returned to the prairie for inspiration. These works became popular and critical successes.
In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, published in 1922. This work had been inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother. He was Nebraska's first officer killed in World War I. Those same letters are now held in the George Cather Ray Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Cather was celebrated by critics like H.L. Mencken for writing in plainspoken language about ordinary people. When novelist Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he paid homage to her by saying that Cather should have won the honor.
Later critics tended to favor more experimental authors. In times of political activism, some attacked Cather, a political conservative, for writing about rather than working to change conditions for ordinary people.
In her later life, Cather spent summers on Grand Manan Island, in New Brunswick, Canada, in the Bay of Fundy, where she owned a cottage in Whale Cove.
Cather is buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
Excerpted from Source.
Read more about her here, here and here
Willa Cather was born on a small farm in Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia.
In 1883, Cather moved with her family to Catherton in Webster County, Nebraska. The following year the family relocated to Red Cloud, the county seat. Cather spent the rest of her childhood in the town which she made famous by her writing. Willa Cather insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money for her to enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
While in college, Cather became a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal. Cather then moved to Pittsburgh, where she taught high school English and worked for Home Monthly. After receiving a job offer from McClure's Magazine, she moved to New York City for her career. McClure's Magazine serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, a work heavily influenced by Henry James.
Cather moved to New York City in 1906 to join the editorial staff of McClure's and in 1908 was promoted to managing editor. As a journalist, she co-authored a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. It was serialized in McClure's in 1907-8 and published as a book the next year. Christian Scientists were outraged and tried to buy every copy. The work was reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1993.
In New York Cather met a variety of authors. Sarah Orne Jewett advised her to rely less on the influence of James and more on her own experiences in Nebraska. For her novels Cather returned to the prairie for inspiration. These works became popular and critical successes.
In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, published in 1922. This work had been inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother. He was Nebraska's first officer killed in World War I. Those same letters are now held in the George Cather Ray Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Cather was celebrated by critics like H.L. Mencken for writing in plainspoken language about ordinary people. When novelist Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he paid homage to her by saying that Cather should have won the honor.
Later critics tended to favor more experimental authors. In times of political activism, some attacked Cather, a political conservative, for writing about rather than working to change conditions for ordinary people.
In her later life, Cather spent summers on Grand Manan Island, in New Brunswick, Canada, in the Bay of Fundy, where she owned a cottage in Whale Cove.
Cather is buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
Excerpted from Source.
Read more about her here, here and here
1 comment:
What about the young talking to the old? That can be almost worse. If you don't believe it, just visit some lodges and listen.
Post a Comment