Willa Cather's Books
Youth and the Bright Medusa
Paul had just come in to dress for dinner; he sank into a chair, weak in the knees, and clasped his head in his hands. It was to be worse than jail, even; the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally and forever. The grey monotony stretched before him in hopeless, unrelieved years; Sabbath-school, Young People's Meeting, the yellow-papered room, the damp dish-towels; it all rushed back upon him with sickening vividness. Excerpt fr "Paul's Case," one of eight poetic stories in this memorable collection.
My Antonia
My Ántonia (first published 1918) is considered the greatest novel by American writer Willa Cather. My Ántonia — pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of "Ántonia" — is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia.
O Pioneers!
A classic novel of the Nebraska prairie, O Pioneers! is the story of Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers, whose devotion to the land sustains her against the hardships and suffering of prairie life. A new addition to the Bantam Classic line.
Youth and the Bright Medusa
Willa Cather, best-known as the author of "O Pioneers , My Antonia," and "Death Comes for The Archbishop" published "Youth and the Bright Medusa," a collection of her short fiction, in 1920. According to Alfred Knopf, Cather had been displeased with the dull brown covers of "O Pioneers " and "My Antonia," and upon seeing the bright blue Chinese cloth Knopf had purchased to cover other hardcovers, immediately handed him the manuscript of "Youth and the Bright Medusa," Also in Knopf's belief, Willa Cather cared nothing for how much she would be paid for her work, but rather for fame and positive attention. "Youth and the Bright Medusa" is a collection of eight stories of artistic endeavor, told in Cather's clear and lucid prose. Fans of Cather's novels may well be enthralled by this collection, which in its quiet simplicity is as elegant and insightful as anything the author ever wrote.