Willa Cather : Later Novels : A Lost Lady / The Professor's House / Death Comes for the Archbishop / Shadows on the Rock / Lucy Gayheart / Sapphira and the Slave Girl (The Library of America) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Sharon O'Brien (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A revivifying reminder of the reading pleasures we may have been neglecting ... to reread Cather is to rediscover an arresting chapter in the national past. -- Los Angeles Times --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The six works in this volume--"A Lost Lady," "The Professor's House," "Death Comes for the Archbishop," "Shadows on the Rock," "Lucy Gayheart," and "Sapphira and the Slave Girl"--are at once intensely lyrical and highly controlled. Their fascination with the American Southwest, early Canada and Catholicism reflects the older Cather's search for alternatives to the grasping civilization she felt was increasingly replacing the spirit of the early pioneers. validation-form-field.keypoints: The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 976 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (July 15, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940450526
• ISBN-13: 978-0940450523
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #498,470 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #44 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( C ) > Cather, Willa
  #45 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics > United States > Cather, Willa

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Her talent is breath-taking, June 20, 2006

By	Karen Potter (Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Somehow, though I love to read,I had missed Willa Cather. I had already read and loved Jane Austen but it was not until I read "My Antonia" that I realized what I had missed all of these years. Willa Cather is truly a genius of the written word. To call her writing 'good' or her stories 'enjoyable' is to understate her talent. Her writing is beautiful though the stories are simple. Each place she writes about makes one believe that she lived there all her life. Her book "Saphira and the Slave Girl" would make you think she had lived there and in that time. Many of her stories are out on the prairie and seem to glow with the golden light from the sun on the fields of grain. Her characterizations are simple but profound and she often throws in a dramatic tale told by a character. And yes, this physical book is also beautiful and a joy to read. It makes one wonder about ever reading a cheap paperback again.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of Cather's finest work, October 3, 2000

By	"maggoire" (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Willa Cather : Early Novels and Stories : The Troll Garden, O Pioneers! the Song of the Lark, My Antonia, One of Ours (Library of America) (Hardcover)

Like all the volumes in the Library of America series, this book is beautiful and made to last. Some readers may be bothered by the thin paper, but it allows so much to be packed into a handy book. As the title states, this is a collection from Cather's early work (her first "first novel," _Alexander's Bridge_, is missing). _The Troll Garden_ is a collection of Cather's early short stories, most in the manner of H. James and have a fin-de-siecle tone. "The Sculptor's Funeral," which depicts a town's inability to recognize achievement in any form but monetary, is perhaps the best. That and two other stories were revised by Cather for _Youth and the Bright Medusa_ (1920 an available in LoA 57 _Stories, Poems, and Other Writings_). Reading the versions side-by-side, one can achieve insight into Cather's growing abilities as a writer. However, the most rewarding read in this volume is _My Antonia_. Cather's first masterpiece depicts the lives of Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda from their arrival in Black Hawk, Nebraska to twenty years after Jim leaves Black Hawk for a life in the East. Antonia remains in Nebraska, becomes a maid in town, and marries (twice). The theme of the book, from Jim's perspective, is aptly captured in the epigraph: "optima dies . . . prima fugit" (from Virgil's _Aeneid_). Again like all volumes in the LoA, a chronology of the authors life, a "Note on the Texts" and a few notes, containing information on allusions and translations of foreign words and phrases appear at the end of the volume.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely perfect fiction, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

One of my all-time favorite books. Attractively packaged on acid-free paper. Very classic looking. And the fiction is excellent! Her stories about the Plains, the Southwest, Chicago, and Quebec are perfect works of art. I especially liked "Tom Outland's Story" contained within "The Professor's House."