Willa Cather

'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' Death Comes for the Archbishop is the story of two missionary priests, travelling through the American Southwest in the aftermath of the Mexican American wars. Father Jean-Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant spread Catholic faith and religious practices, convert and gather new souls, and discipline wayward priests. Their missionary journey takes them towards a greater understanding of the place and people they serve. Cather wrote at length about the layers within her texts and the influences and the details she incorporated. This edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop edited by Catherine Morley highlights and addresses these details: Cather's engagement with fine art, her palimpsestic layering of texts, and her movement through different languages. Morley also places Cather among her American modernist peers, while reflecting upon the thematic details of the text, and offering insights into Cather's personal life and her life as a writer. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"There was something about the open sky, the rolling land, and the lonely roads that belonged to more than one time and more than one people." Journey across the prairies, cities, and quiet corners of America and Europe in stories that blend tenderness and realism, memory and longing. This evocative collection brings together Willa Cather's finest short fiction-vivid tales of pioneers, artists, immigrants, and dreamers. With extraordinary insight, Cather reveals small moments that open lives wide: a young man's yearning for distant beauty, a community's trials and joys, a family's search for meaning. These stories celebrate resilience, connection, and the restless search for home, painting unforgettable portraits that linger long after the page is turned.

Features of this Special Edition: Illustrated Edition - Includes 20 captivating illustrations that bring key moments of the novel to life. Exclusive Bonus Content - Features a detailed summary, character list, and a biography of Willa Cather to enhance your reading experience. Perfect for Literature Lovers - A beautifully formatted edition designed for both classic readers and new audiences. Willa Cather's The Professor's House is a deeply moving exploration of nostalgia, intellectual isolation, and the tension between past and present. The novel follows Professor Godfrey St. Peter, a middle-aged historian who, despite professional success, feels an overwhelming sense of loss. As his family embraces wealth and materialism, he clings to the memories of a simpler past-especially those of Tom Outland, a brilliant young student whose tragic fate left an indelible mark on his life. Through exquisite prose and a masterful dual narrative, Cather contrasts the professor's quiet discontent with the adventurous spirit of Tom's youthful discoveries in the American Southwest. Rich in philosophical depth, the novel questions what truly gives life meaning-success, love, or the pursuit of something greater? This special illustrated edition brings Cather's evocative world to life, making The Professor's House an unforgettable literary experience. Whether you're revisiting this masterpiece or discovering it for the first time, this edition is a must-have for lovers of classic literature.

'I knew at once I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries' The Professor's House (1925) depicts the mid-life crisis of Godfrey St. Peter, a history professor at a midwestern state university who is disillusioned with his wife and daughters, his university, and the materialism of American culture. He longs for Tom Outland, his most brilliant student, who died on a World War I battlefield. At the same time, Tom's recollection of discovering hidden cliff dweller ruins in New Mexico interrupt Godfrey's narrative. Cather's own experiences of travel in the Southwestern US with her partner, Edith Lewis, shadow and enrich her depictions of Tom's New Mexican experiences. Cather's sixth novel is a compelling modernist work of art that raises questions that are still compelling a century later. What is the purpose of a university education? Are the sacrifices of war worth the outcome? To whom do the American past and the country's future belong? A daring experiment in form, the novel is haunted by war and love. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

When Latour arrives in 1851 in the territory of New Mexico, newly acquired by the United States, he finds a vast desert region of red hills and tortured arroyos that is American by law but Mexican and Indigenous in custom and belief. Over the next four decades, Latour works gently and tirelessly to spread his faith and to build a soaring cathedral out of the local golden rock–while contending with unforgiving terrain, derelict and sometimes rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Death Comes for the Archbishop shares a limitless, craggy beauty with the New Mexico landscape of desert, mountain, and canyon in which its central action takes place, and its evocations of that landscape and those who are drawn to it suggest why Cather is acknowledged without question as the most poetically exact chronicler of the American frontier.