Willa Cather

On his deathbed, John Bergson, the head of a Swedish American family, decided to will the family farm to his daughter, Alexandra, instead of her two older brothers. Though it upset his sons, John was firm in his decision, knowing that the conditions in Nebraska required discipline and strength to strive. Alexandra, already a strong-willed woman, accepted the farm and devoted herself to it. Through droughts and depression, Alexandra’s neighbors give up and move away, but Alexandra is determined to make the farm succeed and prove that her father made the right decision. A time jump in the narrative affirms Alexandra’s goals, but invites troubles to rival those presented by the harsh realities of the Nebraska plains. Carl Lindstrum, an old friend and neighbor, comes back into town after his abrupt departure years before, stirring an old flame between he and Alexandra. Emil, Alexandra’s younger brother, also returns home after going to a state college. The two Bergson siblings, Alexandra and Emil, soon find themselves in forbidden relationships. With the pressure of secret love, unpredictable weather, murder, and scandal, Alexandra and Emil must persevere to protect their family and preserve their happiness. Separated into five sections, The Wild Land, Neighboring Fields, Winter Memories, The White Mulberry Tree, and Alexandra, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! depicts neighborly disputes, forbidden love, family drama, and murder, all to the backdrop of pioneer Nebraska. With themes of feminism and innovation, O Pioneers inspires perseverance and participation in new inventions and ideas. O Pioneers! is the first of the critically acclaimed and commercially praised Great Plains trilogy, entertaining with its drama and sentiment while enlightening audiences with visceral depictions of pioneer life in the early origins of midwestern America. With a new eye-catching cover design and reprinted in an easy-to-read font, this edition of O Pioneers! , written by the esteemed author Willa Cather, is now accessible and appealing for a modern audience.

Born in a small Colorado town, Thea Kronborg’s aspirations to be a famed musician makes it difficult for her to fit in. With the reputation of being different and strange, Thea has a challenging time getting along with her siblings and peers, though her mother and Aunt are supportive of her dreams. When Thea’s piano instructor is run out of town over a scandal, Thea takes over his business at age fifteen. She is also forced by her father to play the organ at their church because he believes this new devotion to a job would make her less pious. Despite her new jobs and outlet for her musical ability, Thea feels unsatisfied in Colorado, but when tragedy strikes, she finally gets an opportunity to chase her dreams. After the death of a local conductor that had been enamored by her, Thea inherits enough money to pursue a formal music education in Chicago. During her piano training, and with the help of some of her Chicago friends and mentors, Thea realizes that she has an impressive singing voice. After feeling inspired by a visit to the orchestra, Thea decides to pursue a career as an opera singer. With a new dream and drive, Thea struggles to achieve her goals without compromising her values and independence. Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark breaks the conventions of its time with the depiction of an independent woman protagonist with aspirations outside of the home. Cather also challenged the typical depiction of small-town country life by presenting realities such as the common uniformity and intolerance sometimes expressed within rural communities. The Song of the Lark remains to be a fascinating look into 19th century rural life, with an unadulterated view on the journey of an artist. This edition of The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather is accommodating to a contemporary audience with a modern font and stunning new cover design.

On his deathbed, John Bergson, the head of a Swedish American family, decided to will the family farm to his daughter, Alexandra, instead of her two older brothers. Though it upset his sons, John was firm in his decision, knowing that the conditions in Nebraska required discipline and strength to strive. Alexandra, already a strong-willed woman, accepted the farm and devoted herself to it. Through droughts and depression, Alexandra’s neighbors give up and move away, but Alexandra is determined to make the farm succeed and prove that her father made the right decision. A time jump in the narrative affirms Alexandra’s goals, but invites troubles to rival those presented by the harsh realities of the Nebraska plains. Carl Lindstrum, an old friend and neighbor, comes back into town after his abrupt departure years before, stirring an old flame between he and Alexandra. Emil, Alexandra’s younger brother, also returns home after going to a state college. The two Bergson siblings, Alexandra and Emil, soon find themselves in forbidden relationships. With the pressure of secret love, unpredictable weather, murder, and scandal, Alexandra and Emil must persevere to protect their family and preserve their happiness. Separated into five sections, The Wild Land, Neighboring Fields, Winter Memories, The White Mulberry Tree, and Alexandra, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! depicts neighborly disputes, forbidden love, family drama, and murder, all to the backdrop of pioneer Nebraska. With themes of feminism and innovation, O Pioneers inspires perseverance and participation in new inventions and ideas. O Pioneers! is the first of the critically acclaimed and commercially praised Great Plains trilogy, entertaining with its drama and sentiment while enlightening audiences with visceral depictions of pioneer life in the early origins of midwestern America. With a new eye-catching cover design and reprinted in an easy-to-read font, this edition of O Pioneers! , written by the esteemed author Willa Cather, is now accessible and appealing for a modern audience.

Obscure Destinies Is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1932. Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, works such as O Pioneers , My ntonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.

First published in 1925, "The Professor's House" is the profound study of a middle-aged man's unhappiness by critically acclaimed American author Willa Cather. The novel tells the story of its central character, Professor Godfrey St. Peter, in three parts. In the first part, the Professor feels that he is losing control over his life and resists the direction it is taking. He is displeased with his family's move to a new house, with his daughters being grown and married, and with the death of Tom Outland in the First World War, who was a beloved student and the fianc of his oldest daughter. In the second part, the Professor recalls the first-person account of Tom and his explorations in New Mexico. Tom's goodness and love of nature are a sharp contrast to the materialism and superficiality of the Professor's new son-in-law and his death has been a great loss to the family. The third section finds the Professor alone, despondent, and losing his will to live while secluded in his old study as the rest of his family is off on vacation. "The Professor's House" is a moving and affecting study of fear, mortality, and one man's struggle to find meaning in his changing life. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

My ntonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. It is the final book of her "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, ntonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting.

I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the greatmidland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and motherwithin a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived inNebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the 'hands' on my father'sold farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake'sexperience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train untilthe morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world. We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of thejourney. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, awatch-charm, and for me a 'Life of Jesse James, ' which I remember as one of the most satisfactorybooks I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passengerconductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal ofadvice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who hadbeen almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states andcities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than anEgyptian obelisk. Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a familyfrom 'across the water' whose destination was the same as ours.'They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is "We go BlackHawk, Nebraska." She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as anew dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too 'This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to 'Jesse James.' Jakenodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners. I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey throughNebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The onlything very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska. I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; wewere surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the redglow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered bybundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. Thewoman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and agirl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man witha lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for itwas positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tong

One afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed by a pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country somewhere in central New Mexico. He had lost his way, and was trying to get back to the trail, with only his compass and his sense of direction for guides. The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was so featureless-or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly alike. As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and very much the shape of haycocks. One could not have believed that in the number of square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could be so many uniform red hills. He had been riding among them since early morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had stood still. He must have travelled through thirty miles of these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them, and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than haycocks- yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every conical hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform yellowish green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other, elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over.

O Pioneers is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather. It was written in part when Cather was living in Cherry Valley, New York, with Isabelle McClung and was completed at the McClungs' home in Pittsburgh. Alexandra Bergson is the main character of the book. A strong-willed and intelligent woman. She was given the farm by her father John Bergson and after 16 years turned it into a very prosperous one. Alexandra isn't very adept at sensing peoples feelings or her own. It takes her a long time to realize that she loves Carl Linstrum. She also doesn't sense Emil's growing attraction toward the unhappily married Marie Shabata. She seems easy to forgive as well, as she claims to have no ill will against Frank, despite the fact he savagely murdered her brother...(wikipedia.org)

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873- April 24, 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers , My ntonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at age 33 she moved to New York where she lived for the rest of her life. "Youth and the Bright Medusa" is a collection of short stories is by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, The Troll Garden. The collection contains the following stories: "Coming, Aphrodite " "The Diamond Mine" "A Gold Slipper" "Scandal" "Paul's Case" "A Wagner Matinee" "The Sculptor's Funeral" "A Death in the Desert" (wikipedia.org)

O Pioneers is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather. It was written in part when Cather was living in Cherry Valley, New York, with Isabelle McClung and was completed at the McClungs' home in Pittsburgh. Alexandra Bergson is the main character of the book. A strong-willed and intelligent woman. She was given the farm by her father John Bergson and after 16 years turned it into a very prosperous one. Alexandra isn't very adept at sensing peoples feelings or her own. It takes her a long time to realize that she loves Carl Linstrum. She also doesn't sense Emil's growing attraction toward the unhappily married Marie Shabata. She seems easy to forgive as well, as she claims to have no ill will against Frank, despite the fact he savagely murdered her brother...(wikipedia.org)

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873- April 24, 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers , My ntonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at age 33 she moved to New York where she lived for the rest of her life. "Youth and the Bright Medusa" is a collection of short stories is by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, The Troll Garden. The collection contains the following stories: "Coming, Aphrodite " "The Diamond Mine" "A Gold Slipper" "Scandal" "Paul's Case" "A Wagner Matinee" "The Sculptor's Funeral" "A Death in the Desert" (wikipedia.org)

My ntonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. It is the final book of her "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, ntonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting.

Youth And The Bright Medusa This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING

First published in 1915, "The Song of the Lark" is a novel by American author Willa Cather. Her third novel, it is considered the sequel to "O Pioneers " (1913) and prequel to "My ntonia" (1918). The story revolves around a talented Colorado artist who turns her hand to singing to the backdrop of a burgeoning American West at the turn of the twentieth century. Contents include: "Friends Of Childhood", "The Song Of The Lark", "Stupid Faces", "The Ancient People", "Dr Archie's Venture", "Kronborg", and "Epilogue". Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947) was an American writer famous for her novels related to frontier life on the Great Plains. Other notable works by this author include: "O Pioneers " (1913) and "My ntonia" (1918). She won the Pulitzer Prize for her World War I novel "One of Ours" (1922). This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an excerpt from "Willa Cather - Written For The Borzoi, 1920" by H. L. Mencken.

First published in 1912, "Alexander's Bridge" is American author Willa Cather's first novel. The story centres around Bartley Alexander, a famous engineer and bridge builder who is going through a mid-life crisis. Despite having a wife named Winifred, Bartley rekindles an old flame in London-an affair that Bartley's innate propriety and honour would make him regret. Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947) was an American writer famous for her novels related to frontier life on the Great Plains. Other notable works by this author include: "O Pioneers " (1913), "The Song of the Lark" (1915), and "My ntonia" (1918). She won the Pulitzer Prize for her World War I novel "One of Ours"" (1922). This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an excerpt from "Willa Cather - Written For The Borzoi, 1920" by H. L. Mencken.