Early novels and stories

by Willa Cather

Paper Book, 1987

Status

Available

Call number

813/.52

Genres

Collection

Special Collections

Publication

New York, N.Y. : Literary Classics of the U.S. : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by the Viking Press, c1987.

Description

The first of three volumes presenting the writings of Willa Cather includes her early book of stories and first four novels. The troll garden: Cather's first short story collection, originally published in 1905, depicts characters who seek the realm of beauty and imagination, but are confronted by the vulgarity and brutality of American society. O pioneers!: In Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson leads her family to success, but not without personal sacrifice. The song of the lark: Follows the life of Thea Kronberg from her childhood in 19th-century Colorado to her career as a renowned opera singer. My Antonia: The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant. One of ours: The son of a prosperous Nebraska farmer yearns to leave his prairie home.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member JVioland

She is one of my favorite authors. This compilation is one of those that, if you were isolated from society for some time, you would relish reading it over and over again. Cannot praise it enough.

2 more

LibraryThing member ritaer

Have only read Troll Garden, a collection of short stories grouped around the theme of artists and their patrons

LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd

My Antonia: The word for this novel is "exquisite". There isn't a lot of story, but there is deft characterization, and beautiful descriptive language that turns the commonplace into the iconic. Page after page I marveled at Cather's ability to show the beauty of landscape, the vitality of young

children at play, the difficulties of early 20th century life on the prairies of North America...all in terms that sound both original and inevitable. And by the time I reached the last chapters, the adult Antonia was speaking in my Slovak grandmother's voice. I said somewhere else that this book feels like Little House on the Prairie for adults. That's a bit glib, perhaps, but true still. And I hate to leave this world of hers, hard as it sometimes is to live in it. "Brilliant" is another word for it. All five stars.
January 2014

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