Willa Cather

Youth and the Bright Medusa Willa Cather

Willa Cather, best-known as the author of O Pioneers!, My Antonia, and Death Comes for The Archbishop published Youth and the Bright Medusa, a collection of her short fiction, in 1920. According to Alfred Knopf, Cather had been displeased with the dull brown covers of O Pioneers! and My Antonia, and upon seeing the bright blue Chinese cloth Knopf had purchased to cover other hardcovers, immediately handed him the manuscript of Youth and the Bright Medusa. Also in Knopf's belief, Willa Cather cared nothing for how much she would be paid for her work, but rather for fame and positive attention. Youth and the Bright Medusa is a collection of eight stories of artistic endeavor, told in Cather's clear and lucid prose. Fans of Cather's novels may well be enthralled by this collection, which in its quiet simplicity is as elegant and insightful as anything the author ever wrote.