The Essential Willa Cather: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Ántonia, and One of Ours with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn, and Illustrations by Katherine Eglund

Presenting The Essential Willa Cather: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Ántonia, and One of Ours with an introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn, and illustrations by Katherine Eglund. This collection is part of The Essential Series by Golding Books.

Much of Willa Cather's writing evokes nostalgic memories of growing up on the American plains. Her stories describe the smallness of people in the landscape but their largeness to each other—particularly through the force of the past and memory—and for those characters who have come to settle from far away are the inescapable feelings of homesickness and of forging their way in a new and not yet fully defined world. The moments and above all the feelings that Cather’s novels capture stay with you long after you have read them.

O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia comprise what is commonly referred to as the Prairie Trilogy or the Great Plains Trilogy, classics of both feminist literature and American literature and Cather's crowning achievement. More than simple prairie novels or cowboy novels (though their directness suits the harshness of the landscape), their power as uniquely American literary fiction is undeniable and the distinctive language and pacing are used to potent effect.

While the various and idiosyncratic strong female leads mark the novels out as notable classics of feminist fiction, readers may agree with Henry James scholar Leon Edel's remarks at the time of Cather's 1973 centennial, that "The time will come when she’ll be ranked above Hemingway." In any event, Willa Cather's central works, and the inimitable pleasure that reading them provides, are an adventure that literature lovers and those interested in American history (and particularly the history of those living on its great plains) must not miss.

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873, and grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. Graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1894, where she had changed her plans to major in science to become a physician and completed a B.A. in English (contributing to the local paper and student newspaper), she settled in Pittsburgh to write for the Home Monthly magazine. While there she also taught high school English, and wrote poetry, short stories, and drama criticism for various publications. By 1905, she had published a collection of short stories, The Troll Garden, and in 1906 she moved to New York City to join the editorial staff of McClure’s Magazine. Her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, was serialized by McClure’s in 1912. She followed this with the Prairie Trilogy: O Pioneers (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), then One of Ours (1922) won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1923. Along with more short fiction and essays, she wrote several more novels (the last published in 1940), and she died of a cerebral hemorrhage aged 73 in her Manhattan home in 1947.