Editions

My Ántonia

My Ántonia

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

Reviews

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

    Guardian

  • My Ántonia remains a revelation

    The Paris Review

  • 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

    Harper's Bazaar

More in this Series

About the Author

Willa Cather

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.

Willa Cather

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience. For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.