Buying Options

Read for Free

OR

Kindle Price: $0.00

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add Audible narration to your purchase for just $7.49

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share

My Ántonia by [Willa Sibert Cather]

Follow the Author

My Ántonia Kindle Edition

by Willa Sibert Cather (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

2,506 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$0.00

—

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

"Please retry"

$13.68

$9.01

"Please retry"

$3.99

—

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$4.95

$1.44

MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$9.99

—

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 1 million more titles $0.00 to buy
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial
Hardcover
$19.06

4 Used from $9.01 6 New from $13.68
Paperback
$3.99

1 New from $3.99
Mass Market Paperback
$5.95

48 Used from $1.44 24 New from $4.95
MP3 CD
$9.99

1 New from $9.99

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Print length

129 pages
Language

English
Publication date

March 30, 2011
File size

366 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Not Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Willa Cather
263
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.99
Willa Cather
67
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Willa Sibert Cather
1,318
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.00
Willa Sibert Cather
600
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.00
Willa Sibert Cather
434
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.00
Willa Cather
342
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.00

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.

Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.

As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction. Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants, not only survives her father's suicide, poverty, and a failed romance, she triumphs with high spirits.

From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Willa Cather was an American author and pastoralist known for her vivid depictions of the American Midwest and its inhabitants. Her works include Alexander’s Bridge, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and many more. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours in 1923. After receiving great acclaim upon its publication in 1918, My Ántonia was considered an instant classic. Cather continued to write until later in her life despite suffering from an enflamed tendon in her hand. She died in New York City at age seventy-three. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

An enduring literary masterpiece first published in 1918, this hauntingly eloquent classic is an inspiring reminder of the rich past we have inherited. Willa Cather's lustrous prose, infused with a passion for the land, summons forth the hardscrabble days of the immigrant pioneer woman on the Nebraska plains, while etching a deeply moving portrait of an entire community. As Jim Burden revisits his childhood friendship with the free-spirited Antonia Shimerda, we come to understand the sheer fortitude of homesteaders on the prairie, the steadfast bonds cultivated there, and the abiding memories that such vast expanses inspire. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching Antonia, whose unfailing industry and infectious enthusiasm for life exemplify the triumphant vitality of an era. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Willa Cather (1873-1947) is considered to be one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. She wrote the critically acclaimed novels "Death Comes for the Archbishop," "O Pioneers!," "A Lost Lady," and "The Professor's House." She won a Pulitzer --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

My Antonia is one of the best-loved classics of American literature, read by generations of American high-school students, with good reason....The structure of the novel is beautifully wrought, the writing and character development excellent. Cummings's narration is also well done, with changes in accents and dialects reflecting the adjustment of the characters to their changing lives. --KLIATT (starred review)

My Antonia is one of the best-loved classics of American literature, read by generations of American high-school students, with good reason....The structure of the novel is beautifully wrought, the writing and character development excellent. Cummings's narration is also well done, with changes in accents and dialects reflecting the adjustment of the characters to their changing lives. --Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women

My Antonia is packed with the feel of the country. A scant paragraph sets you out on the plains, and the breath of the wind that billows the long grass never leaves your face.--Chicago Daily News

No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.--H. L. Mencken --.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia. It is the finest thing of its sort ever done in America.”—H. L. Mencken

“Can one name another American novel whose emotional quality is so true, so warm, so human as that of My Ántonia.”—Clifton Fadiman

“To reread Cather is to rediscover an arresting chapter in the national past.”—Los Angeles Times

“The time will come when she'll be ranked above Hemingway.”—Leon Edel --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up--In Jim Burden's accounting of his life with, and without, Antonia Shimerda, listeners are transported to the hardscrabble Nebraska prairie and the rural immigrant experience. When Jim first sees the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia, disembarking from the same train that is taking him West to live with his grandparents, he has no idea the impact they will have on his life. Nostalgically, he remembers the good and bad times they had on their respective farms and creates his portrait of Antonia, an independent and tough survivor. The brief biography of author Willa Cather at the beginning of the CD explains how her life mirrors Antonia's life in many ways, helping listeners understand the context of the story. Patrick Lawlor's rich, fluid voice lends an air of sophistication to Burden, reinforcing the class structure inherent at the beginning of the 20th century. Lawlor's attempts to create voices for the characters often falls flat. Since the novel is Burden's reminiscence, it would have been better told in Burden's voice alone. Since My Antonia continues to be a staple in many English curriculums, this is a good audiobook for schools and public libraries to have available.--Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Yarman's diction is very precise and measured. Both the pace and the articulate style make this version an excellent choice for ESL programs. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Cather's classic gets the red carpet treatment here. Along with the full text, the volume also includes historical essays and explanatary notes by scholar James Woodress along with 15 photographs and two maps.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

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 father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's 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.

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watchcharm, and for me a Life of Jesse James, which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from "across the water" whose destination was the same as ours.

"They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is 'We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.' She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!"

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to Jesse James. Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: "Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west?"

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lanternlight. He might have stepped out of the pages of Jesse James. He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.

I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land-slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheepfold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.

II

I do not remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.

"Had a good sleep, Jimmy?" she asked briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, "My, how you do look like your father!" I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. "Here are your clean clothes," she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. "But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about."

"Down to the kitchen" struck me as curious; it was always "out in the kitchen" at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed-the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little halfwindows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.

"Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy."

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, "Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!" Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.

After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.

While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat-he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbours there.

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular-so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a "perfect gentleman," and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his "chaps" and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design-roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels.

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word "Selah." "He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah." I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.

Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk-until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts-comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and cruved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004UJIQNU
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 30, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 366 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 129 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #8,087 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #29 in Education & Reference (Kindle Store)
- #29 in Linguistics (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
2,506 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Willa Cather

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		17%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		8%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all customer images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Victoria Scheider

DO NOT BUY the $3.98 version of this Kindle book!

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

This version is completely nonsensical. It seems like it was translated into another language and then back into English by a horrible computer translator. I'll be getting my money back for this. Example of original text from first page: "Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, I do not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the great Western railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office for weeks together." In this ridiculous version the same line reads as follows: "Although Jim Burden and I every live in New York, and are vintage pals, I do not see hundreds of him there. He is crook advise for one of the first-rate Western railways, and is every now and then some distance from his New York workplace for weeks together." So, people, don't be cheap--I will try to get them to remove this item but hopefully nobody else wastes money on this version...

65 people found this helpful

Busy Reader: Get To The Point

WARNING - version, word usage changes in the middle

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2020

Verified Purchase

I read this novel from a library copy, 1st World Library, 2006. I bought the Kindle edition to save time typing notes from the text [Kindle's notebook feature and the website are great for this purpose.] In the beginning, all my marked passages [marked with tape flags] were identical to the Kindle version, but on page 195, my library book read:

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."

The Kindle read, "Some reminiscences are realities, and are higher than whatever that could ever manifest to 1 once more."

None of my notes in the remaining pages used the same words. This meant I couldn't search and find them easily. Also, I liked the library book phrasing much better than the Kindle. As in the sentence above, the library book's prose was cleaner, more forceful. The Kindle version read like a first draft the author punched up afterward and forgot to discard.

The novel itself is magnificent, read it in the First World edition or online at the Gutenberg site. I won't ask for a refund because this Kindle was only $3 and I did get my notes from the first 2/3 of the book that way.

20 people found this helpful

Excellent Slice of Americana

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book was declared a masterpiece by a Wall St. Journal reviewer in the" Masterpiece" section of that newspaper. Since this year is the 100th anniversary of its publication, my husband & I decided to read it. The description was lyrical, depicting the life of a Czech immigrant & her family on the Nebraska plains in the 1880s. It told the hardships & joys of that rugged life in detail so the reader gained an accurate picture of what courage was required to survive & eventually become successful. "Tony" was the archetypal Earth Mother figure: strong & fecund. She is a heroine who is much needed today.

3 people found this helpful

Cather's masterpiece, or one of several?

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2017

Verified Purchase

I can't think of another novel that captures the time and place as well as Cather's My Antonia. It's a wonderful story of an immigrant family settling in Nebraska, and the travails of the displacement and the introduction to the hardscrabble life of midwestern winters and poverty in the late 1800s. The writing is simple and utterly compelling -- direct but authoritative. Her ability to describe landscape is distinctive and extraordinary.

38 people found this helpful

Heart Warming Story

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a well written story about an orphan boy and his friendship with an immigrant from Bohemia - Antonia. Very heart warming and makes you feel like you are reliving American history.

All-American Masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

In this novel Willa Cather takes the stuff of everyday life and transforms it into epic literature by way of the alchemy of her style, her tone, and her characters who are completely alive. She sets a tone of nostalgia right away with a frame that describes the chance encounter on a passenger train out west between Jim Burden and an acquaintance where they share their common memories of a spirited young Bohemian woman on the plains. Then we have the finest thing ever written in American Literature: “All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first glorious autumn.” And we’re off.

The setting of Black Hawk, Nebraska at the end of the 1800s provides the background for the world of the small town growing up with a population of farmers and merchants, immigrants and itinerant cowboys. We witness throughout this largely plotless though riveting novel the joys and the heartbreaks in this world. The narrator, Jim Burden, is profoundly influenced by the community but he also is fated to depart for the East. A few subsequent visits to his hometown over the ensuing decades round out the stories of the characters who had such lively and eventful times growing up.

I don’t want to diminish Cather’s powerful imagination but I think one of the things that’s so wonderful about this novel is the way that she used her own experiences to help her tell this story. Two of the bulls in the novel are named Gladstone and Brigham Young and this apparently was what her father called his own bulls on account of the stubborn disposition in one and the physical adequacy in the other. This kind of true life inspiration didn’t go unnoticed in Cather’s lifetime. According to the footnotes of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition one local immigrant’s obituary made the claim about a passage in ‘My Antonia’ that “There is no doubt that the inspiration for this sketch came from her acquaintance with Mr. Hansen.”

Cather quotes Virgil in saying “in the lives of mortals the best days are the first to flee” and this book is a profound exploration of this theme of the early formative influences of life and their effect on our characters and personalities. It can also be understood to show the way the character of a community or nation is formed by its past as well. Cather also wrote that “Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again” and I would say that this book, too, is a reality, and reading it is better than anything that can ever happen to one.

8 people found this helpful

Avoid this version of the book

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Do not buy this version of this book. It's a bunch of gibberish. It's as if someone used a thesaurus to change every word to the point where the sentences don't make sense. Now I need to buy a different version as someone recommended it to me and I want to read the real book. I guess I'll just have to sample the next one first before committing to buying.

12 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

Book was received on time. Great condition.

Top reviews from other countries

FictionFan

A nation of immigrants…

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

One day in the late 19th century, two children arrive separately in Nebraska on the same train. Jim Burden is a ten-year-old boy, recently orphaned and coming to the prairie land to live with his grandparents. Ántonia Shimerda is a couple of years older, immigrating to America from Bohemia with her family. Although from different backgrounds and traditions, the children become friends, learning about the land and wildlife of their new home together as they explore it with some of the other children in the farming neighbourhood. Over the years their friendship will gradually fade as Jim goes off to university and later to live in New York, but he always remembers Ántonia, and now in middle-age has set out to write down his memories of her.

To start, I’ll explain why for me it only rates as four stars – simply put, it has no plot, which unfortunately is one of the things most likely to make me grumpy about a book. Instead it is a description of the short-lived era of pioneering, a wonderful depiction of the land and people’s relationship with it before it was fully tamed, a foundational story of the creation of America, and a coming-of-age tale of Jim, primarily, but also of Ántonia and of the frontier itself.

The writing is excellent, especially in the descriptions of the various settings. The vastness of the landscape, the strength and courage of the pioneers, the rapid development of towns and social order are all portrayed brilliantly, leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s mind – for this reader, more lasting than the lives of our major protagonists, I must admit, who largely felt as if they existed to tie together a rather disparate set of episodes illustrating facets of the frontier life. Ántonia herself disappears completely for large parts of the book and her story is often told at a distance, by some third party telling Jim the latest gossip about her. The introduction in my Oxford World’s Classics edition suggests a long-running debate between people who think the book is fundamentally Ántonia’s story, or Jim’s. I fall into the latter category – for me, this is very definitely Jim’s story, and through him largely Cather’s own. But mostly it feels like a part of America’s story, or of its myth-making of itself as a ‘nation of immigrants’ – that is not to denigrate the myth or to suggest it is untrue, simply to say that all nations form myths from their own history which reflect and influence how they feel about themselves and how they act as a society. And I feel this foundational myth-creation aspect may be why the book has earned its place in the hearts of so many Americans, and as a well-deserved American classic.

3 people found this helpful

Mark Rasdall

Pioneers but not pioneering for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2021

Verified Purchase

I eagerly bought this book, written in 1918, as it is considered by many to be Willa Cather’s masterpiece.

Having read it, I don’t feel any closer to greatness.

The story is told by the orphan – Jim Burden - who travels to Black Hawk in Nebraska to live with his grandparents, where he meets Antonia Shimerda and her family who have had a much longer journey from Bohemia. Living on neighbouring farms they become childhood friends and Jim is asked by Antonia’s mother to teach her two daughters English.

The girls’ father never really wanted to move from his native Bohemia, preferring to spend time with his friends, playing his violin. For him the ‘American Dream’ ends in suicide. Jim’s grandparents move to the edge of Black Hawk where he studies and eventually becomes a lawyer on the East Coast.

Antonia’s life has been hard – both working the land and various positions of domestic drudgery. Eventually – after being duped by a fraudster – she marries and has a large family who Jim meets many years later and resolves to remain close to.

Almost immediately, the isolation of farmsteads on the prairie and the harsh conditions in which such pioneering families had to survive are paramount, as is the poverty and the ever-present mindfulness of the riches of others close at hand. The descriptive prose is lovely until it becomes so much more wallpaper, waiting patiently to witness some action in the room.

Antonia is a tragic figure in many ways. She works extraordinarily hard her whole life and never really gets ahead. Her mother is arrogant and difficult; her father dies; she is abused by seemingly everyone and we are supposed to believe that she ultimately finds salvation in her family, back out there on the prairie. I’m not sure I believe it.

Antonia and Jim remain friends though their different paths through life cause them to live world’s apart until they cross once more. I got a sense of strong friendship between the two but never really love – certainly not the desperation of unrequited love. I didn’t really feel strongly about either of them and, once the interest in and admiration of their will to survive faded, so did my interest in the book.

I enjoyed the first part of the book and absolutely loved the last chapter. When I’d finished it, I just felt there was so much I had missed in between. In terms of character building and plot development it seemed to meander like a small stream along the floor of a largely forgettable valley: much less grand canyon as great hype

2 people found this helpful

Roses are Amber

Classic American historical fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

My Antonia is classic American historical fiction set in Nebraska in the 1880s.

It is told by Jim Burden, who met Antonia when they were both children. Jim was going to Black Hawk to live with his grandparents, while Antonia came with her family from Bohemia. Living close to each other, they quickly became friends.

This story tells of harsh pioneering times, when people spread across America in search of a better future. They tamed the land, withstood the seasons and the hardships that Mother Nature threw at them and many thrived. Antonia took to life on the land with ease, doing the work of men for many years. Her friendship with Jim drifted at times, especially when he left to study and become a lawyer, but, years later, they renewed their acquaintance.

I enjoy stories of early settlers and their strengths against adversity; I find them both humbling and motivating. This story involves a range of immigrants and their stories were all interesting; each worked hard for themselves and the future of their families. It makes me wonder how much the next generation and the ones after that really appreciated the hardships of their forefathers.

First published in 1918, this is a snapshot of a long past era. Even during the telling of this story change happened and progress marched confidently forward. Ideal for anyone, like me, who enjoys dipping back in history and losing themselves for a few hours of reading.

4 people found this helpful

Book fiend

Beautiful descriptions of the prairie/farmlands of Nebraska in the late 1800s.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2021

Verified Purchase

This particular edition of Cather's excellent novel has a hugely comprehensive and lengthy introduction as well as notes for the text. Read the book before you read the introduction as otherwise you can get a big bogged down with names and places that mean nothing. The story revolves around 2 principal characters and is told in the first person (Jim Burden) who grows up with the Antonia of the title. Although the teller of the tale is a man the story seems rather to be written as a woman might write it and, of course, it is not a modern novel so ideas and attitudes have changed enormously. The descriptions of life in Nebraska at that time are incredibly real and you can just imagine yourself in amongst the red grass of the prairie and sensing the hardships of that life. The characters all ring true as well. Definitely worth reading. A good one for a book club.

Ivy

a struggle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2019

Verified Purchase

I loved 'O Pioneers', the first book in the Prairie trilogy, which really brought the praire to life and had a wonderful heroine and an engaging story.

'My Antonia' is almost opposite, though parts of it are beautifully written. Very little of it takes place on the praire, which is a shame because that was the best part and I wish it had continued there. Instead it follows the narrator Jim as he seems to drift aimlessly through life whilst regularly waxing lyrical about 'the country girls'. It reads like the ramblings of an extremely lovesick teenage boy, and I don't feel like we get to know any of the characters deeply, which you would need in a book that doesn't have much of a plot.

If you're thinking of reading Cather, I would recommend 'O Pioneers' instead.

4 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Alexis de Tocqueville
157
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $1.99
Frederick Douglass
3,295
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.99
Robert Vincent Remini
290
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
William Shakespeare
5,025
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $2.99
Willa Sibert Cather
1,318
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.00
Herman Melville
64
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $4.99

Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?

Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?

Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?

Get to Know Us

Make Money with Us

Amazon Payment Products

Let Us Help You

English United States

© 1996-2022, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates