A Lost Lady

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 
 
How light and alive she was! Like a bird caught in a net . . . 
 
Marian Forrester enchants everyone around her: her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; the small town of Sweet Water; and Niel Herbert, her unwavering confidant. Yet, her irresistible charm and dazzling wit conceal a dangerous vulnerability – and her greatest secret. A significant inspiration for The Great Gatsby, this exquisite novella is a poignant elegy for a bygone era, fading into history.

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873 and moved to Nebraska, with its wide open plains and immigrant farming communities, at the age of nine. This landscape would deeply affect her later writing. She attended university and became a journalist and teacher in Pittsburgh, and then a magazine editor in New York. Her first major novel, O Pioneers!, appeared in 1913 and was followed by two more in her prairie trilogy, The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia, as well as her masterpiece Death Comes for the Archbishop. She lived with the editor Edith Lewis for thirty-nine years until her death in 1947.

How light and alive she was! Like a bird caught in a net . . . 
 
Marian Forrester enchants everyone around her: her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; the small town of Sweet Water; and Niel Herbert, her unwavering confidant. Yet, her irresistible charm and dazzling wit conceal a dangerous vulnerability – and her greatest secret. A significant inspiration for The Great Gatsby, this exquisite novella is a poignant elegy for a bygone era, fading into history.

O Pioneers!

The first novel in Willa Cather's acclaimed Great Plains Trilogy, published for the first time by Vintage Classics with beautiful jackets.

Willa Cather was a Pulitzer prize-winning American writer, best known for her novels of Nebraskan frontier life. Born in 1873 near Winchester, Virginia, she moved with her family to Catherton, Nebraska in 1883, and the landscape went on to have a formative effect on her. Before becoming a full-time writer, Cather worked as a journalist, a magazine editor and a teacher. 
 
 
Her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, was published in 1912, followed by titles including O Pioneers! (1913); The Song of the Lark (1915); My Ántonia (1918); One of Ours (1922), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize; Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940). She died in New York in 1947.

Willa Cather's first Great Plains novel, is at once a love letter to Nebraska and the tale of a remarkable heroine who remains resilient in the face of tragedy. 
 
 ‘She is undoubtedly one of the greatest American writers’ Observer 
 
 Alexandra Bergson inherits the family farm when her father dies early. In spite of her brothers’ doubts, her ambitious vision for the land comes to fruition, but the price of success appears to be a small, quiet life. Then the equilibrium of country life is jeopardised by the return of Alexandra’s brother Emil and her childhood confidant, Carl Linstrum.

The Song of the Lark

The second novel in Willa Cather's acclaimed Great Plains Trilogy, published for the first time by Vintage Classics with beautiful jackets.

Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic

The Song of the Lark illuminates all her work

The second novel in Willa Cather’s Great Plains trilogy, is a lyrical coming-of-age story charting the struggles of an artists life. 
 
 'Lingers long in the memory' Joyce Carol Oates 
 
 Thea Kronberg, gifted with a beautiful voice, defies her humble beginnings in Colorado and finds success far from her small hometown. But her achievements come with painful drawbacks. As the distance between Thea and her roots increases, she must fight to find her inner strength and reach her full potential. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PENELOPE LIVELY

My Ántonia

Willa Cather’s best-loved novel and a beautiful portrayal of frontier life in Nebraska is published for the first time by Vintage Classics, with a new introduction by travel writer Sara Wheeler.

A clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit

The knowledge of long hardship gives weight to the novel’s exquisitely realized moments of fulfilment… Cather looks with a wise, clear eye on those quiet moments

Willa Cather’s best-loved novel, and the final book in the Great Plains trilogy, is a beautiful portrayal of friendship, longing and growing up in frontier Nebraska. 
 
 When young orphan Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska, he finds himself growing up alongside Bohemian immigrant Ántonia Shimerda. Their childhoods are full of shared adventures but as they grow their paths diverge, spurred on by the dire poverty of the Shimerda family. Yet Jim will never forget Ántonia, spellbound by her strength and remarkable free spirit. 
 
 WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TRAVEL WRITER SARA WHEELER

Death Comes for the Archbishop

A moving testament to friendship, published for the first time by Vintage Classics as part of our Willa Cather series.

Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously ... a major, and rare, artistic achievement

Quite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells...This is a book which I go on rereading.

A portrait of an enduring friendship, from one of America’s most celebrated novelists. 
 
‘Quite simply a masterpiece’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 Two priests are despatched from Rome to New Mexico to reinvigorate Catholicism among the locals, knowing little of the challenges that await them. Over almost four decades they encounter a rich variety of people, from rebellious Mexican priests to steadfast Native Americans uninterested in changing their longstanding customs. 
 
‘Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously ... a major, and rare, artistic achievement’ AS Byatt

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The final novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is a celebration of the American midwest with Cather's strongest heroine at its heart 
 
Jim and Ántonia meets as children in the wide open plains of Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century. Jim leaves for college and a career in the east, while Ántonia stays at home, dedicating herself to her farm and family. As the years roll by, Jim will come to view Ántonia as the embodiment of the prairie itself - tough, spirited and enduring, despite the hardness and loneliness of pioneer life. Willa Cather's beautiful novel is a celebration of the Nebraskan prairie she loved she much, and a powerful depiction of a pivotal era in the making of America.

One of the warmest, most quietly rousing books that I know; a clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit and the innate hardiness of the immigrants who came across the ocean to start afresh in the golden west

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

Cather was the first great American novelist to make the West - the real West, not the stuff of pulp fiction - her theme. She makes you see, smell, and feel the prairie

Jim and Ántonia meets as children in the wide open plains of Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century. Jim leaves for college and a career in the east, while Ántonia stays at home, dedicating herself to her farm and family. As the years roll by, Jim will come to view Ántonia as the embodiment of the prairie itself - tough, spirited and enduring, despite the hardness and loneliness of pioneer life. Willa Cather's beautiful novel is a celebration of the Nebraskan prairie she loved she much, and a powerful depiction of a pivotal era in the making of America.

The second novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is a passionate portrait of the artist as a young woman 
 
Thea Kronberg, a young girl from a small town in Colorado has a great gift - her beautiful singing voice. Her talent takes her to the great opera houses of Europe, and through ambition and hard work, she forges a life as an artist. But if she can never go home again, nor can she leave behind her past. At last, in a desert canyon in Arizona, Thea has a revelation that will allow her to attain a new state of spirituality and become a truly great artist. 
 
'Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic' Helen Dunmore 
 
'The Song of the Lark illuminates all her work' A. S. Byatt 
 
'Lingers long in the memory' Joyce Carol Oates

Thea Kronberg, a young girl from a small town in Colorado has a great gift - her beautiful singing voice. Her talent takes her to the great opera houses of Europe, and through ambition and hard work, she forges a life as an artist. But if she can never go home again, nor can she leave behind her past. At last, in a desert canyon in Arizona, Thea has a revelation that will allow her to attain a new state of spirituality and become a truly great artist.

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it 
 
To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, Nebraska following the death of their father. As the years pass, Alexandra rises heroically to the challenge, finding strength in the savage beauty of the land even as loneliness and personal tragedies crowd in. A rapturous work of understated lyricism, Willa Cather's 1913 tale of a pioneer woman who tames the wild, hostile lands of the Nebraskan prairie is also the story of what it means to be American.

Her voice, laconical and richly sensuous, sings out with a note of unequivocal love for the people she is setting down on the page

The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world almost as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us

Takes a knife and stabs you through the heart, by its joining of such ravishment with such pessimism

To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, Nebraska following the death of their father. As the years pass, Alexandra rises heroically to the challenge, finding strength in the savage beauty of the land even as loneliness and personal tragedies crowd in. A rapturous work of understated lyricism, Willa Cather's 1913 tale of a pioneer woman who tames the wild, hostile lands of the Nebraskan prairie is also the story of what it means to be American.

Penguin Classics

'Quite simply a masterpiece ... I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells' A. N. Wilson 
 
'Where there is great love there are always miracles' 
 
Two French priests have been sent to New Mexico to reawaken the faith. There, they must contend with unforgiving landscapes, danger, rebellion and loneliness. But through their many years together they are sustained by faith, friendship and the awe-inspiring majesty that surrounds them. A work of great simplicity and sublime beauty, Willa Cather's acclaimed novel asks, what is a life well lived? 
 
Death Comes for the Archbishop is a masterpiece by the author of O Pioneers! and the great novelist of American frontier life. 
 
'Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously ... a major, and rare, artistic achievement' A. S. Byatt

Quite simply a masterpiece ... I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells ...This is a book which I go on rereading

Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously in the reader, and cannot be summed up ... Cather's composed acceptance of mystery is a major, and rare, artistic achievement

A tremendous, ranging story, economical and distilled as poetry

Two French priests, friends since childhood, are sent to the newly created diocese of New Mexico. Life there is hard and frequently dangerous. Journeys between parishes are beset by the perils of bandits and storms. The people do not always want to hear the priests' message. But through their many years together, the two priests are sustained by friendship, faith and the magnificent landscapes of New Mexico, until at last they must be separated. 
 
Cather's beautiful novel is renowned for its vivid writing on landscape and is a variation on her great theme: the making of America in the west.

April Twilights and Other Poems

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

The Everyman edition is the first to print the complete poems – the collection April Twilights, first published in 1903, together with additional poems which appeared in an expanded edition twenty years later, and others which are uncollected and previously unpublished. It also includes an illuminating selection from her newly released letters.

One of the foremost American novelists of the early twentieth century, Willa Cather (1873-1947) was born in Virginia but grew up in Nebraska. Before she wrote the novels that would make her famous, she was known as a poet, the most popular of her poems reprinted many times in national magazines and anthologies. In such lyrical poems as ‘Prairie Dawn’, ‘The Hawthorn Tree,’ ‘Going Home’ and ‘Winter at Delphi’, Cather exhibits both a finely tuned sensitivity to the beauties of the physical world and a richly symbolic use of the landscapes of myth. The themes that were to animate her later masterpieces found their first expression in these haunting, elegiac ballads and sonnets. 
 
Cather’s O Pioneers! and My Antonia are already available in Everyman’s Library.

First published in 1913, the novel that made Willa Cather famous is a powerfully mythic tale of the transformation of the American frontier as seen through the life of one extraordinary woman

At the turn of the twentieth century. When their father dies young, exhausted by the failure of his attempts at agriculture, it is left to the visionary Alexandra to guide the family to prosperity and safeguard the fortune of her brothers. Strong-willed and fiercely independent, she succeeds against all odds, but only at the cost of her own fulfilment as a woman. Central to the novel's action is the Nebraskan landscape it describes, by turns unyielding and fruitful, bitter and ecstatic.O Pioneers! joins Cather's My Antonia in Everyman's Library.

My Antonia

The classic American novel, published for the first time in The Everyman Library hardback edition

'The time will come when Willa Cather will be ranked above Hemingway.'

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

Of Antonia, the passionate heroine of Willa Cather's greatest novel, the narrator says that she left 'images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time'. The same could be said of the novel itself. On one level it is a straighforward story, beautifully written, of the struggle for survival of a family of pioneers on the vast Nebraska plains. On another it encompasses history, the relationship ofhuman beings and the natural world, and the destiny of the individual - even as it lovingly and unsentimentally portrays a woman whose robust spirit and enduring warmth make her emblematic of what Cather most admired in the American people. 
 
'The time will come when Willa Cather will be ranked above Hemingway.' - Leon Edel

Willa Cather

Nicholas Gaskill

Quite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells . . . This is a book which I go on rereading.

The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.

A powerful piece of writing, rich with the essence of a poor but beautiful country and a simple yet dignified people.

When Latour arrives in 1851 in the territory of New Mexico, newly acquired by the United States, he finds a vast desert region of red hills and tortured arroyos that is American by law but Mexican and Indigenous in custom and belief. Over the next four decades, Latour works gently and tirelessly to spread his faith and to build a soaring cathedral out of the local golden rock–while contending with unforgiving terrain, derelict and sometimes rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. 
 
Death Comes for the Archbishop shares a limitless, craggy beauty with the New Mexico landscape of desert, mountain, and canyon in which its central action takes place, and its evocations of that landscape and those who are drawn to it suggest why Cather is acknowledged without question as the most poetically exact chronicler of the American frontier.

Death Comes For The Archbishop

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Willa Cather

Praise for Death Comes For The Archbishop

Quite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells . . . This is a book which I go on rereading.

The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.

A powerful piece of writing, rich with the essence of a poor but beautiful country and a simple yet dignified people.

Quite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells . . . This is a book which I go on rereading.

The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.

A powerful piece of writing, rich with the essence of a poor but beautiful country and a simple yet dignified people.

Quite simply a masterpiece . . . I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells . . . This is a book which I go on rereading.

The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.

A powerful piece of writing, rich with the essence of a poor but beautiful country and a simple yet dignified people.

Books by Willa Cather

Series by Willa Cather

Great Plains Trilogy

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