A Lost Lady: A novel

by Willa Cather, Maureen Corrigan (introduction)

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics, Novella

78 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Wilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.

She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.

After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.

Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.

She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.

She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.

Reviews

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mrs. Forrester is the lady of the title, much younger wife of an older business man fallen on hard times. She also, apparently, represents the fading of the Wild West, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Cather a note apologizing for stealing her for Daisy from The Great Gatsby. This story also has some shades of Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence and the lost lady of that reminded me of Mrs. Forrester, although as a Westerner she would never make it into the Four Hundred). There is one of the most terrible scenes I’ve ever read in a book that includes a woodpecker that will haunt my nightmares - you will know it when you come to it - and paints the villain Ivy Peters in a bad light from the very beginning. I think I like My Ántonia better, but they both have this sadness about them, a lost world, lost ladies, boys (who perhaps stand in for Willa Cather?) who worship unattainable prairie women.

[Mariga Temple-West · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. A portrait of a woman who attaches herself to men who can give her the life she wants. Without a man, she comes unraveled. She is exciting, glittering, like no one else. Or is it all artifice?

Just FYI, there is an episode of bird torture in this book that is worse than anything I've read in Stephen King.

[Natacha Pavlov · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He liked being alone with the old things that had seemed so beautiful to him in his childhood."

My first Willa Cather read and won't be my last.