O Pioneers! / The Song of the Lark / Alexander's Bridge

by Willa Cather

Three exquisite novels by one of America's greatest writers: Alexander's Bridge, her first novel; O Pioneers!, a celebration of the frontier settlers; and The Songs of the Lark, in which an artist tries to free herself from her small-town beginnings.

Genres: Fiction, Classics

523 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1915

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

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read The Song of the Lark. I've read O Pioneers! before and will probably read Alexander's Bridge eventually because I have a little crush on Cather and her descriptions of American landscape. This novel follows the artist as a young girl in Moonstone, CO who grows up to become a world class operatic diva. This novel is strongest when we are a part of Thea's conscious coming into herself and her gifts as Cather writes in this lovely passage: "She had always believed that by doing all that was required of her by her family, her teachers, her pupils, she kept that part of herself from being caught up in the meshes of common things. She took it for granted that some day, when she was older, she would know a great deal more about it. It was as if she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere. It was moving to meet her and she was moving to meet it." Thea does have people that help her along the way, including faithful Dr. Archie the town physician, and Fred Ottenburg, scion of a St Louis brewer; her relationship with the last is intimate, but destined to never be consummated in marriage because Fred has a conveniently ill wife who denies him a divorce and Thea has her singing which allows room for little else. She even refuses, for instance, to leave an engagement in Dresden that can make her career to come home and see her dying mother. But before then one of the most interesting sections of the book takes Thea to cave dwellings in a canyon outside Flagstaff, AZ where she makes for herself a cocoon in the rocks and finds "she felt completely released from the enslaving desire to get on with the world." It is these small moments where we glimpse the tender and gentle opening of the bud of an artist that comprise the best parts of the book. She learns about the native people who used to inhabit the canyon and realizes, "The stupid women carried water for most of their lives; the cleverer ones made the vessels to hold it," and makes the connection between the pottery makers and herself as she creates the voice that will take her into the world. The Arizona section is my favorite part of the book, perhaps because it reminded me of my own travels in the Southwest and that other great artist who found food for her soul there, Georgia O'Keeffe. The final section before the unnecessary epilogue falters because Thea becomes "Kronborg" and her life is described, for the most part, by outsiders. The shift from the burning center of Thea's awakened consciousness to the fringe accounts left me cold. But you do realize that creation of great art is its own enslavement. Thea continues to fight and struggle for position and she sacrifices much for her independence along the way. I think this is an important novel because of its depiction of the woman artist. Set between O Pioneers! and My Antonia, Thea Kronborg is the girl who got away from the Prairie, but never left behind the sense of freedom and possibility it gave her.

[Kim]

My Mom turned me onto Willa Cather so many years ago. I love the simple and honest writing from Ms. Cather, she describes life in a hard but simpler time. Love the movie in my mind.