An Immense Career.

BRIAN FERGEL

Dr. P. Reuben

English 2210

3/11/2002

An Immense Career

Career Willa Cather, American novelist and short-story writer, was born Willela Sibert Cather on 7 December 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, near Winchester. At nine years of age, in 1883, her family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. Many of her novels were set in Red Cloud. She attended the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and graduated in 1895. She spent a few years after college working on a newspaper, and then worked an editorial job at the magazine Home Monthly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She then wrote reviews for the Pittsburgh Leader. In 1903, she published a book of poetry, April Twilights, and she moved to New York City in 1904. She met Edith Lewis the same year, whom she later shares an apartment with in 1908, and they live together until her death (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia).

Next, she taught high school in Pittsburgh in 1895, then moved to NY City to work on the editorial staff of McClure’s magazine in 1906 (Crane: 218, 256). Ultimately, she saved McClure’s magazine from financial disaster, after she became managing editor (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). In 1908, she befriends Sarah Orne Jewett, an inspiration for Cather’s later works (Crane, 198). Cather is most widely recognized for her chronicles of western pioneer America. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for One of Ours. Cather died 24 April 1947, at 73 years of age, and is buried in New Hampshire (Crane, Editorial). Cather worked careers as a journalist, an editor, and a fiction writer – but her first publication was a poetry collection, April Twilights (1903).

The birthplace of her writing career was Pittsburgh, as Cather noted (North Side: Willa Cather). She moved to New York City in 1904, and she met Edith Lewis the same year, whom she later, in 1908, shares an apartment, and they live together until her death (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia).

Cather worked careers as a journalist, an editor, and a fiction writer – but her first publication was a poetry collection, April Twilights (1903). But she is not recognized as a ‘Poet’ in any historical career escalation reference. That is, out of all my research, none of it identifies her as a poet, yet she was first recognized for writing a poetry collection.

Actually, Cather herself declines to regard poetry of any practical value, that poetry holds no material means, as well art in general, that evolves mainly for the release of the artist. She sharply acknowledges that all art holds, instead of any practical value, native and abstract values. But all art does indeed hold value. Therefore, no other writer likely considers her a signature poet since she does not hold poetry of any material value; obviously, in her rationale, poetry marks the artistic extreme of any writing she’s done. (Ahearn)

Regardless, after her debut poetry collection, she published a short story collection, The Troll Garden in 1905. After this short story collection, she edited McClure’s magazine in New York, eventually to become the managing editor, until 1912. She left the magazine, in fact, with encouragement from coworkers to focus her wisdom solely on a novelist career. But her first “important writing,” according to George Seibel, former critic and head of the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, was a short story published in Cosmopolitan magazine (Lathrop, xi).

In the same year that she left McClure’s, she published Alexander’s Bridge in 1912, which ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

In the same year that she left McClure’s, she published Alexander’s Bridge in 1912, which ignited her career as a novelist. Actually, it was first presented in McClure’s magazine as Alexander’s Masquerade, broken up into segments of three consecutive issues (February, March, and April of 1912), and the novel was published in April. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. She next, in consecutive order, published O Pioneers! (1913), then My Antonia (1918), and next A Lost Lady (1923), all three written on her past in Nebraska (Lathrop, 90).

Her next publication, One of Ours (1923), gained the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. One might note that novel as the height of her career. Other famous books, to name merely a celebrated few of the many, include The Professor’s House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) – to finish the yearly cycle. Then she published more renowned novels, including Shadows on the Rock (1931), Lucy Gayheart (1935), and Sapphira the Slave Girl (1940).

The earliest book in the aforementioned reference, The Professor’s House (1925), has compelled some critics and scholars to compare Cather to Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, granting quite a philosophical connection between modernism and postmodernism. Basically, that modernism regards the “loss of ground” as, ultimately, beneficial, that being holds an utmost meaning, that transformation is indeed necessary. This outlook opposes postmodernism, forasmuch as “postmodernism experiences the loss of ground as a release of tyranny of any and all forms of ultimate meaning and thus denies the claim that being has any ultimate ground.” Moreover, Frank H.W. Edler comments on Cather’s grace: “The deceptive simplicity of Cather’s language makes it an easy read and thus makes it all too easy to miss the language because it is so well crafted” (Edler).

Cather seems quite the flip side – the female version, rather – of Oscar Wilde. Aside from the homosexuality issue in both cases, they both have many renowned literary comparisons of the same ideal. Notably, by nearly every biography written of either of them, the articulate sentences that they became able to develop almost spontaneously constitutes a shared signature attribute. Moreover, the insistence that all humans should expose individuality intensifies the prose of both Authors (Reclaiming History).

The irony of this comparative outlook, however, resides in the fact that Cather condemned Oscar Wilde in her book column published in the Lincoln, Nebraska Journal, in 1895.

Cather was also known to avoid the press to a notable degree, even after her death. In fact, a complete bibliography was not produced concerning her life until over three decades after her death. She had a reputation for, according to Frederick B. Adams, being very stern, very precise with her grammar and prose, so naturally she wouldn’t want another person to write a bibliography on her life. Ultimately, she controlled the media (Adams, foreword in Willa Cather: A Bibliography).

According to JoAnna Lathrop, two reasons for this three-decade span, which no bibliography was produced, is due to her lengthy and extensive career. Her literary career lasted nearly fifty years, and the wide range of her literary impact covers a broad spectrum of literary careers. In the beginning, she worked as a writer under altered pen names. Then she worked as a newspaperwoman: a columnist, a drama and music critic, a book reviewer, and a reporter. And she was also a feature writer for magazines: an editor, a writer, a poet, a short-story writer, essayist, and a novelist. So no writer dared to embark on that broad range of jobs over such a seemingly drawn-out crusade. Furthermore, I dare not go into listing a complete history of her published writing either, for another writer has already written an entire book of well over a hundred pages, all devoted to listing Willa Cather’s published works: Willa Cather: A Checklist of Her Published Writing, by JoAnna Lathrop (1975).

An Immense

She next, in consecutive order, published O Pioneers! (1913), then My Antonia (1918), and next A Lost Lady (1923), all three written on her past in Nebraska. Her next publication, One of Ours (1923), gained the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. One might note that novel as the height of her career. Other famous books, to name merely a celebrated few of the many, include The Professor’s House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) – to finish the yearly cycle. She then published several more novels, including Shadows on the Rock (1931), Lucy Gayheart (1935), and Sapphira the Slave Girl (1940). The earliest book in the aforementioned reference, The Professor’s House (1925), has compelled some critics and scholars to compare Cather to Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, granting quite a philosophical connection between modernism and postmodernism. Basically, that modernism regards the “loss of ground” as, ultimately, beneficial, that being holds an utmost meaning, that transformation is indeed necessary. This outlook opposes postmodernism, forasmuch as “postmodernism experiences the loss of ground as a release of tyranny of any and all forms of ultimate meaning and thus denies the claim that being has any ultimate ground.” (Edler) Moreover, Frank H.W. Edler comments on Cather’s grace: “The deceptive simplicity of Cather’s language makes it an easy read and thus makes it all too easy to miss the language because it is so well crafted.” Cather seems quite the flip side – the female version, rather – of Oscar Wilde. Aside from the homosexuality issue in both cases, they both have many renowned literary comparisons of the same ideal. Notably, by nearly every biography written of either of them, the articulate sentences that they became able to develop almost spontaneously constitutes a shared signature attribute. Moreover, the insistence that all humans should expose individuality intensifies the prose of both Authors (Reclaiming History, 14). The irony of this comparative outlook, however, resides in the fact that Cather condemned Oscar Wilde in her book column published in the Lincoln, Nebraska Journal, in 1895. Cather was also known to avoid the press to a notable degree, even after her death. In fact, a complete bibliography was not produced concerning her life until over three decades after her death. She had a reputation for, according to Frederick B. Adams, being very stern, very precise with her grammar and prose, so naturally she wouldn’t want another person to write a bibliography on her life. Ultimately, she controlled the media (Adams, foreword). According to JoAnna Lathrop, two reasons for this three-decade span, which no bibliography was produced, is due to her lengthy and extensive career. Her literary career lasted nearly fifty years, and the wide range of her literary impact covers a broad spectrum of literary careers. In the beginning, she worked as a writer under altered pen names. Then she worked as a newspaperwoman: a columnist, a drama and music critic, a book reviewer, and a reporter. And she was also a feature writer for magazines: an editor, a writer, a poet, a short-story writer, essayist, and a novelist. So no writer dared to embark on that broad range of jobs over such a seemingly drawn-out crusade. Furthermore, I dare not go into listing a complete history of her published writing either, for another writer has already written an entire book of well over a hundred pages, all devoted to listing Willa Cather’s published works: Willa Cather: A Checklist of Her Published Writing, by JoAnna Lathrop (1975). (Another) Work Cited: Willa Cather , by Amy Ahearn, Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 14 March 2002

Willa Cather Novels:

1903: Cather releases a book of poetry, April Twilights

1905: Collection of Short Stories, The Troll Garden

1912: Publication of her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge

1913: Her next novel, O Pioneers, is published.

1915: The Song of the Lark is published.

1918: My Antonia is published.

1920: Youth and the Bright Medusa [a short story collection] is published

1922: One of Ours is published, which receives the Pulitzer Prize for fiction from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

1923: A Lost Lady is her next to be published.

1925: The Professors House is published.

1926: Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Mortal Enemy are simultaneously published.

1931: Shadows on the Rock is published.

1932: Obscure Destinies [another short story collection] is published.

1935: Lucy Gayheart is published.

1936: Not Under Forty [essay collection] is published

1938: Sapphira and the Slave Girl is published.

SOURCES CITED:

Lathrop, JoAnna. Willa Cather: A Checklist of Her Published Writing, The University of Nebraska Press, 1975.

Crane, Joan. Willa Cather: A Bibliography, The University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

Carlin, Deborah. “Reading Willa Cather: Problems and Poetics in the Late Fiction.” Harvard University, June 1987.

Cather, Willa. O Pioneers, Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Rosowski,Susan J. Mignon, Charles W. Danker, Kathleen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Adams, Frederick B. Foreword in Willa Cather: A Bibliography, The University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

“Language and Being in Cather’s “The Professor’s House: A Look Back and Forth from Thoreau to Nietzsche and Heidegger.”” An Essay by Frank H. W. Edler. Metropolitan Community College Omaha, Nebraska. Copyright © 2000, Frank Edler

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press, 2000.

Reclaiming History. [http://www.uic.edu/depts/quic/history/willa_cather.html], 11 March 2002

North Side: Willa Cather. [http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/northside/nor_n111.html], 11 March 2002