My Antonia

Description

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. 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 ntonia 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 ntonia, spellbound by her strength and remarkable free spirit. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TRAVEL WRITER SARA WHEELER

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 ntonia (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.

A clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit * Guardian * My Antonia 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 -- Alexandra Harris * Harper's Bazaar *