Willa Cather

I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the hands on my fathers old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jakes experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

Willa Cather (1873-1947) vivió tiempos de cambios radicales en los Estados Unidos, una época de auténtica revolución literaria. "La muerte llama al arzobispo" recrea una atmósfera mágica donde confluyen ritos, creencias y supersticiones de muy diversa procedencia. Sus protagonistas son dos sacerdotes catolicos que viven aventuras y afrontan peligros como si fueran, en ocasiones, los heroes de un "western".

El canto de la alondra es una de las primeras novelas, publicada en 1915, después del gran éxito de O PIONEERS! (1913). Con ésta, que homenajea desde su título a Walt Whitman, y con Mi Antonia (1918), la siguiente novela, comparte el motivo de una mujer enfrentada al cumplimiento ineludible de su deber. El canto de la alondra es una gran historia americana, una historia de exito que cuenta el triunfo de la voluntad, el trabajo, la constancia y el sacrificio. La historia de Thea Kronborg, una muchacha de origen sueco, con un talento fuera de serie y una individualidad indomable, que llegara a ser una gran cantante wagneriana, esta inspirada en la vida de Olive Fremstad (1868 o 1871-1951). Pero la vida de Thea tambien es, en buena medida, la de la propia Willa Cather. Como su creadora, Thea Kronborg tiene que salir adelante en un pueblo ferroviario de las grandes praderas del Oeste americano, equivoca su vocacion, se sacrifica para conseguir lo que quiere y en un momento crucial elige su carrera y deja de lado cualquier vida sentimental. El aliento epico no disimula las miserias, las mezquindades ni los momentos de soledad. Pero las dificultades no impiden la generosidad ni la bondad. Cuando Thea Kronborg sea una de las estrellas del Met, el celebre Metropolitan Opera House de Nueva York, seguira midiendo el valor de las cosas por los seiscientos dolares que le lego de niña su amigo el ferroviario Ray Kennedy, con la condicion de que fuera a estudiar a Chicago. En El canto de la alondra, el exito no viene solo del empeño en cumplir un proyecto individual, sino de la confianza que su madre, sus amigos, los que la quieren, depositan en su protagonista, a veces incluso a pesar de ella.

Aquesta és una història de solidaritat. La solidaritat entre els nouvinguts i els que ja hi eren. La solidaritat que fa aixecar un país que ho ha oblidat i és a punt de fer-nos-ho oblidar a tots. La

Situada en una pequeña localidad de Nebraska a finales del siglo xix, Pioneros relata una historia de inmigración y supervivencia cuya figura central es Alexandra, una valiente joven que, a la muerte de su padre, se hace cargo de la familia y que, con su teson, su inteligencia y su trabajo, consigue sacar adelante sus tierras desafiando las convenciones sociales sobre el papel de la mujer. Los colonos de Willa Cather, entre los que ella misma vivio, son emigrantes procedentes de todos los rincones de Europa, familias que luchan contra la adversidad en una tierra salvaje y un clima extremado, en su mayoria artesanos que aprenden a cultivar la tierra a traves de la amarga experiencia del fracaso.

Black Creek Valley, Virginia, 1856. Sapphira Colbert es una de las pocas propietarias que mantienen esclavos en sus tierras. Una práctica que su marido, Henry, considera cada vez más difícil de defen

Willa Cather based "Death Comes for the Archbishop" on William Howletts account of the life of Father Macheboeuf, vicar to Archbishop Lamy of New Mexico. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the book follows the fortunes of Father Latour and his assistant and friend, Father Vaillant, as they organize the disjointed religious structure of the southwestern missions. The two face a formidable task, made more difficult by powerful priests long in control of the area who are loathe to abandon the corruption into which they have fallen. Working together diligently and with an unshakable faith, Father Latour and Father Vaillant eventually reclaim the region and bring its far-flung communities under the guidance of a single diocese.First published in 1927, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" is the book that Cather believed to be her finest work. Like "The Professors House," it is a novel that explores the life of a man and draws on the American Southwest for its setting. Here the similarity ends, however, as the tone of the two books is quite different.Unlike the earlier books, this one celebrates the life choices of its central characters, finding in the lives of Father Joseph Vaillant and Father Jean Marie Latour a simple dignity and extraordinary fulfillment.

First published in 1912, "Alexanders Bridge" is a novel by American writer Willa Cather and the authors first. Although "Alexanders Bridge" was published a century ago, the book is still relevant today and has some important lessons on ways to live our life in harmony."Alexanders Bridge" tells the story of Bartley Alexander, an engineer who designs bridges. A man of action, strong and handsome, Bartley has moved from his humble western beginnings to attain success and respect among eastern elites. His comfortable life and place in Bostons high society are thanks in no small part to his loving wife, Winifred, who comes from a well-to-do family. But Bartleys life is upended on a business trip to London. There he encounters Hilda, an old college flame who is now an actress. Already grappling with the feeling that his routinized life, successful though it may be, has left him empty, running into Hilda ignites a passionate affair. The love triangle that results and Bartleys internal struggle as he leads a double life provide much of the drama that unfolds. Bartley finds himself helpless in his attempts to end his relationship with Hilda, ultimately leading to tragedy.

Originally published in 1923, "A Lost Lady" is Willa Cathers elegiac portrait of the spirit of an earlier age. In her depiction of Marian Forrester, the much-admired figurehead of culture and society in the town of Sweet Water, Cather evokes a quality of life that began, for her, to vanish sometime around the beginning of the twentieth century. To Cather, much of what was wrong with twentieth century life was the absence of those qualities that Mrs. Forrester embodies: charm, warmth, and a certain graciousness of manner that has no place in the harsher climate of an industrialised society.Marian Forrester is the symbolic flower of the Old American West. She draws her strength from that solid foundation, bringing delight and beauty to her elderly husband, to the small town of Sweet Water where they live, to the prairie land itself, and to the young narrator of her story, Neil Herbert. All are bewitched by her brilliance and grace, and all are ultimately betrayed. For Marian longs for "life on any terms," and in fulfilling herself, she loses all she loved and all who loved her. This, Willa Cathers most perfect novel, is not only a portrait of a troubling beauty, but also a haunting evocation of a noble age slipping irrevocably into the past.

La colección de cuentos The Troll Garden and Selected Stories fue el primer libro de ficción de Willa Cather y tan relevante hoy como en el momento de su publicación en 1905. Es curioso que ese duende, o troll, que aparece en el titulo original, no salte a nuestro encuentro en ninguna de las historias, todas ligadas a personajes que aman las artes y cuyas vidas se relacionan con sus diferentes expresiones, por lo que quiza solo se haga visible ante nuestros ojos considerando su sentido metaforico: el duende, el genio o la inspiracion que se revela como un fantasma tras la invocacion de cualquier forma de arte.

A 100th anniversary edition of Cathers most-read, most-loved novel_with a new introduction by Jane Smiley. In this symphonically powerful novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning heroines in American fiction, a woman whose robust high spiri

Claude Wheeler craves excitement, far more than he can ever find as a farmers son. He encounters more at university, where the modern world beyond farm life offers new thrills and challenges, only to lose them as the farm calls him back. World War I offers him even more . . . but he may crave excitement more than life itself can allow. Wanting it as much as he does cant protect him from the consequences of personal bravado in an age of killing machines.

My Ántonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Antonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions on both children, affecting them for life. This novel is considered Cathers first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting.

She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun...' A rapturous work of savage beauty, Willa Cather's 1913 tale of a pioneer woman who tames the wild, hostile lands of the Nebraskan prairie is also the story of what it means to be American. It is a new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

Youth and the Bright Medusa is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, The Troll Garden.This collection contains the following stories:"Coming, Aphrodite!" a.k.a. "Coming, Eden Bower!""The Diamond Mine""A Gold Slipper""Scandal""Pauls Case""A Wagner Matinee""The Sculptors Funeral""A Death in the Desert"

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed itTo the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, N

Brilliantly intelligent, rich and stylish Myra is a living legend in her hometown.But she sends shockwaves through the community when she rejects her riches and elopes with hard-up Oswald Henshawe.When Nellie, a long-time acquaintance of Myras, next sees the couple, they are living a glamorously poor Bohemian life in post-Revolution Paris, with singers, actors, poets and artists in and out of their apartment.But, when elegant poverty becomes real poverty in a tumbledown hotel, Myra realises the identity of her Mortal Enemy.This heart-rending study of the blessings and curses of love is perfect for fans of Thomas Hardys Tess of the dUrbervilles and Middlemarch by George Eliot.

From one of the foremost 20th-century novelists, a portrait of a formidable woman who defies the limitations set on women of her time and social station to become an international opera star. This coming-of-age novel, important for the issues of gender and class that it explores, is one of Cather''s most lyrical and popular.