My Antonia

Description

Set in rural Nebraska, Willa Cather's My Antonia is both the intricate story of a powerful friendship and a brilliant portrayal of the lives of rural pioneers in the late-nineteenth century. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has an afterword by Bridget Bennett and original illustrations by W. T. Benda. Antonia and her family are from Bohemia and they must endure real hardship and loss to establish a new home in America. But Antonia is never broken by adversity, and her strength and love of life stays with her childhood friend Jim for years to come, even as he leaves home to study and pursue his career. Told through Jim's eyes, My Antonia is a rich and beautiful novel about childhood and growing up, different cultures and the lure of home.

Born in 1873, Willa Cather was raised in Virginia and Nebraska. After graduating from the University of Nebraska she established herself as a theatre critic, journalist and teacher in Pittsburgh whilst also writing short stories and poems. She then moved to New York where she took a job as an investigative journalist before becoming a full-time writer. Cather enjoyed great literary success and won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours. She's now best known for her Prairie trilogy: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark and My Antonia. She travelled extensively and died in New York in 1947.

It's 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 -- Xan Brooks * Guardian * Willa Cather was a wordsmith of enormous talent -- Robert Slayton * Los Angeles Review of Books * Her novels stick in the reader's mind as flickering memories of places we may never have seen with our own eyes -- Jane Smiley * The Paris Review *