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One of Nebraska’s most famous citizens was born Wilella Sibert Cather in Gore, Virginia, in 1873. Known worldwide as Willa Cather, she and her family moved to Nebraska when she was 9 years old, hoping to escape the tuberculosis outbreaks in Virginia.
In the small village of Red Cloud, Cather grew up among European immigrants and witnessed firsthand the breaking of land on the Great Plains. It was most likely due to this experience in her formative years that she developed a proclivity for portraying frontier life in her writing. At the time, Nebraska was a frontier state, and Cather was inspired by the vast prairies, intense weather, and various cultures she encountered, both Native American and new European, while living in the Midwest. As Cather later wrote, “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of 15.”
After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Cather held various journalism positions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before transitioning into teaching. She then wholly devoted her time to writing after the publication of “April Twilights,” a collection of poetry. Her first novel, “Alexander’s Bridge,” was published in 1912 and follows the character of Bartley Alexander, a bridge engineer who tries to navigate a midlife crisis caused by his extramarital affair. Though the novel didn’t garner as much attention as her later titles, and even disappointed its author in her later years, it kickstarted her career as a novelist and cemented Cather’s preferred themes within her writing, namely a sense of place or belonging tied to both physical spaces and characters.
Cather’s most notable works are sometimes called the “Prairie Trilogy,” a reference to the settings in three novels—“O Pioneers!” (1913), “The Song of the Lark” (1915), and “My Ántonia” (1918). The first and last of these are set in Nebraska around the turn of the 20th century, and all three follow plots of immigration, relationships, and finding one’s place in the world. “O Pioneers!” was particularly significant to Cather herself, as she once referenced in an interview for The Bookman Magazine. “I decided not to ‘write’ at all,” Cather said. “Simply to give up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I’d forgotten.”
A later work titled “One of Ours” (1922) brings Cather’s readers to Nebraska during World War I, this time immersing them in a story that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. Her works have also been praised by fellow writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Cather’s writings became more controversial over the years, some critics complaining that she was “stuck in the past” and didn’t know how to write about contemporary issues. This criticism was mostly associated with her last novel, “Sapphira and the Slave Girl” (1940), which follows a bitter white woman, Sapphira, who grows jealous of a young, beautiful slave girl named Nancy. Readers complained that the story lacked a sense of morality and failed to evoke empathy.
Despite this, Cather’s work remained popular with much of the public and has since been considered some of the most important and engaging American literary content of the 20th century. In December 1945, Cather was diagnosed with breast cancer, and passed away in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Now, in the same Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Cather grew up, is the Willa Cather Foundation, which encompasses the Willa Cather Trust and the National Willa Cather Center. A nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Cather’s works and life story, the foundation provides free information on Cather’s life and literature, along with historical sites, resources, news, and events. With trademarks like the Willa Cather Childhood Home Tour, Willa Cather Review, and online shopping for books and gifts, the foundation’s website keeps readers updated with all things related to this iconic American author.
To learn more, visit willacather.org.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
