Willa Cather

My Antonia Willa Cather

Publisher Marketing: LAST summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling companion James Quayle Burden-Jim Burden, as we still call him in the West. He and I are old friends-we grew up together in the same Nebraska town-and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said. 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. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another is that I do not like his wife. When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way in New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage. Genevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Her marriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the time. It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado. She was a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonish her friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing something unexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters, produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrested for picketing during a garment-makers' strike, etc. I am never able to believe that she has much feeling for the causes to which she lends her name and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, executive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable of enthusiasm. Her husband's quiet tastes irritate her, I think, and she finds it worth while to play the patroness to a group of young poets and painters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortune and lives her own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden. Review Citations: Booklist 09/01/2007 pg. 139 (EAN 9780786168545, Compact Disc) Ingram Paperback Advance 03/01/2005 pg. 63 (EAN 9780451529725, Mass Market Paperbound) School Library Journal 03/01/2004 (EAN 9781400100743, Other) Newsweek 10/29/2007 pg. 16 (EAN 9780140187649, Paperback) Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 96 (EAN 9780140187649, Paperback) Library Journal 02/15/1995 (EAN 9780803214682, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2000 pg. 111 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 157 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2007 pg. 734 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 90 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2011 pg. 900 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 125 (EAN 9780679447276, Hardcover) Ingram Advance 06/01/1999 pg. 101 (EAN 9780140283273, Paperback) Publishers Weekly 02/24/2014 (EAN 9781629230702, Compact Disc) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2002 pg. 594 (EAN 9780395755143, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1992 pg. 674 (EAN 9780395083567, Paperback) Booklist 01/15/1992 pg. 910 (EAN 9780395083567, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1992 pg. 674 (EAN 9780395075142, Hardcover) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1997 pg. 625 (EAN 9780395075142, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1995 pg. 111 (EAN 9780395075142, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Cather, Willa A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Willa Cather's work was profoundly influenced by her upbringing in rural Nebraska. During her young adulthood Cather proved herself intelligent and capable, initially training for a career as a medical doctor, but discovered a love of, and talent for, writing while attending the University of Nebraska. Following graduation, Cather worked as a journalist for several women's magazines before becoming a high school teacher; an opportunity work as an editor at McClure's provided Cather with her first chance to publish as the magazine serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, to critical acclaim. This was soon followed by works that have since become best-loved American classics, including My ntonia, The Song of the Lark, and her Pulitzer-Prize winner, One of Ours. Cather died in 1947 at the age of 73.