A brief biography of Willa Cather written by the Cather Foundation

Willa Cather
Cather Foundation, www.willacather.org

“Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again”
— Willa Cather; My Ántonia
In a sense, Willa Cather’s life story is the story for the quest for truth. It is also about the pursuit of one’s art and the acquisition of fame set against a growing desire for privacy and seclusion.

Early Years: Taking Root
Although born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, in 1873 and buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1947, Willa Cather is commonly remembered as an inhabitant of Nebraska. During her lifetime, Cather penned dozens of novels, short stories, poems, and essays with settings ranging from the American Southwest and the Great Plains to some of the great cities of Europe. Yet when people think of Cather, generally they think of the Nebraska prairie, its pioneer inhabitants, and the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Cather grew up.
Despite Cather’s Nebraska renown, she is recognized almost universally. Her works have transcended the limits of regionalism. They affected the entire course of American literature. On the international stage, too, Cather has assumed a place among literary giants.
As a child, Cather moved with her family (including mother, father, three siblings, maternal grandmother Rachel Boak and two of her grandchildren, and the family’s hired girl Margie Anderson and her brother Enoch) to Webster County, Nebraska, where Cather’s paternal grandparents, William and Caroline, and her Uncle George and Aunt Franc were already homesteading. The year was 1883; Willa was just nine years old.
Cather’s parents baptized her Wilella but she (as well as others) called herself “Willa” and had gave herself the middle name “Love” after the family physician who delivered her. Later, Cather would change her birth date from December 7, 1873, to December 7, 1876. Her entire life Cather either become person she wanted to be, or else she convinced others that she already was. (Her incorrect birth date is even on her tombstone.)
Cather alighted with her family at the Red Cloud train depot and drove sixteen miles by team and wagon to the country. family then stopped at the home of Cather’s grandparents, where they would live for the next year. Cather’s first impressions of the prairie filled her with awe and fear:“This country was mostly wild pasture and as naked as the back of your hand,” she said later. “I was little and homesick and lonely and my mother was homesick and nobody paid any attention to us. So the country and I had it out together and by the end of the first autumn, that shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion I have never been able to shake.”
This was at a time when the conditions in most parts of Nebraska could have been described as “harsh,” and life away from town could be extremely lonesome. However, living in such conditions afforded young Cather an opportunity to meet and gather information from a variety of immigrants and pioneers who spoke languages different from her own. Cather listened to these stories and stockpiled the details, not knowing she would later be using them in some of her novels.
In the winter of their first year, Cather attended a one-room school house. A year later, the family moved to Red Cloud—in part so the children could receive a better education at the town’s school.
At that time, Red Cloud sustained a fairly bustling population of about 2,500 inhabitants, more than double what it is today. Eight passenger trains and several grain trains passed through Red Cloud daily, and a horse-drawn streetcar transferred passengers to and from the local train depot. The Red Cloud Opera House, built in 1885, hosted a number of speakers, performers, and plays, and it was here that Cather developed her love for the stage.
Cather’s parents rented a house on Third and Cedar streets in Red Cloud. Her neighbors, the Wieners, permitted Cather to borrow books from their extensive personal library. Cather also encountered the French language for the first time, as Mrs. Wiener read her French novels and interpreted them as she went along. Cather’s other neighbors, the Miners, quickly became her closest friends. For the first time Cather heard serious music in the Miner house. She would often listen to Mrs. Miner—a talented musician—play the piano. Later, in one of her most famous novels, My Ántonia, Cather would describe the atmosphere in the Miner home as being “like a party” every Saturday night.
Cather also met the Miner’s hired girl, Annie Sadilek. Sadilek, an immigrant from Bohemia, had moved to Nebraska with her family. Previously she had been living in a dugout before moving into town. Annie later served as the model and inspiration for My Ántonia.
As the years passed in Red Cloud, Cather continued to explore the countryside and meet new people. She defied traditional norms by wanting to be a surgeon, which she thought only men were allowed to do. She cropped her hair short, referred to herself as “Willie,” William, or “Wm” Cather, M.D., and adopted a generally male form of dress. She also befriended two of the local doctors.
In 1890, at the age of sixteen, Cather finally graduated from Red Cloud high school. Only two other students graduated that year; all three were required to write a graduation speech, and in June Cather delivered her oration on the stage of the Red Cloud Opera House. Shortly thereafter, she bolted for the state university and greater things awaiting her.

Entering the University
Shortly after graduating from high school Cather left for the University of Nebraska in Lincoln where she hoped to become a surgeon. That changed when one of her professors published one of her essays in a local newspaper. Cather later recalled it was at that moment she decided to become a writer.
Cather’s spent five years at the University. (Her first year was spent in the University’s prepatory school). Having just arrived from a small town, she took full advantage of her newly-found opportunities. As a sophomore, she accepted the literary editorship of the student newspaper, the Hesperian. A year later she accepted the position of the Hesperian’s managing editor. She also served as literary editor of the Sombrero (1894) and editor of her class yearbook (1895). Other activities included participation in debates and theatrical plays and working for two local newspapers, the Courier and the Nebraska State Journal. Cather had a column in one of the newspapers, and for the other she reviewed stage productions.
Cather, like so many recent college graduates, was uncertain about her future following graduation. She returned to Red Cloud and was unhappy. Eventually, she received a job offer for the position of editor of a new (soon to be major with Cather’s help) American periodical. Almost immediately, she packed her belongs and departed for Pittsburgh in order to take charge of the Home Monthly magazine.

From Aspiring to International Author In Pittsburgh Cather took full advantage of the city’s cultural scene, despite absorbing herself in her work at the Home Monthly magazine. She attended live performances, wrote criticism for concerts and the dramatic arts for Pittsburgh’s Courier newspaper, and made numerous friends. She returned briefly to Red Cloud for a year and then accepted a job at the Pittsburgh Daily Leader in 1901. She continued to write for the Courier as well. From 1901 to 1906 Cather also taught high school.
It was also at this time that Cather met Isabelle McClung. In 1902, Cather and McClung set off on their first trip to Europe. One year later (1903) Cather’s first book, a collection of poems, appeared in the United States. It was titled April Twilights. Then, in 1905, Cather published her first collection of short stories, which she titled The Troll Garden. These stories reached the eyes of S.S. McClure, who immediately offered Cather a job at yet another influential American periodical, McClure’s Magazine.
At McClure’s, Cather became one of the most influential editors in America, printing work by leading story writers and “muckrackers” of the day. Nevertheless, running a magazine required a tremendous amount of energy, and her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, did not appear until 1912.
Eventually, however, Cather quit her job as a magazine editor and decided to dedicate herself solely to the art of writing. Between 1913 and 1940 she published nearly all of her major works, beginning with the novel she consider her true first: O Pioneers!. It might be ironic that as a child Cather regarded the natural features of Nebraska as something to be conquered, perhaps even feared. From early on, she desired to leave Red Cloud and the state itself behind; her early short stories—especially those written during her “apprenticeship” period, such as “Paul’s Case” and “A Wagner Matinee”’—describe the Great Plains as grim and inhibitive of artistic freedom; yet by turning her attention to the people and places of her youth, Cather discovered something entirely new and beautiful. Nebraska provided the material she needed to become a truly authentic American author.
Many of Cather’s short stories and other works—novels like O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia (1918), One of Ours (1922), Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)—make use of real people and places. Of these works, the first section of The Song of the Lark is considered by many to be the most autobiographical.
Cather fashioned My Ántonia after the life of “Annie” (Sadilek) Pavelka, whom she befriend in Red Cloud. One of Ours she based on the life of her cousin, G. P. Cather, and the idea for Death Comes for the Archbishop came to her when she visited the Southwest and found a biography of The Life of the Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf, who had been a vicar general with Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy. For Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Cather used incidents from the life of her grandmother to create part of its plot. (The story itself takes place in Back Creek Valley where Cather was born.)
In some of these works and others, Cather employed the actual buildings, streets, and citizens of Red Cloud to populate her fiction. She “borrowed” from elsewhere as well. As she once told an interviewer:“Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist was born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.”
This does not mean, of course, that Cather was an unimaginative writer. However, like many authors, she was a keen observer of life. She had a talent for noticing minute details and saving them for later. It was her talent with words—not just her verisimilitude—that made her the celebrated author she was.
Also between 1913 and 1940, Cather was hounded as a celebrity. She returned to the University of Nebraska to receive her first honorary degree (a doctorate of letters) in 1917. In 1931 she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Princeton. She continued to accept honorary degrees throughout this period. She was elected to the National Institutes of Arts and Letters in 1929 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1938. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Howells Medal for Fiction for Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1930. She also received the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1923 andthe Priz Fémina Américain for Shadows on the Rock in 1933. Cather received a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944. At times Cather seemed so busy she could hardly find the time to write.

Later Years
During the last six years of Cather’s life, her memory remained as vibrant as ever. She worked off and on at one more novel—this one set in one of her favorite cities in France, Avignon—but she was bothered by a pain in her right wrist. Cather asked Edith Lewis destroy the Avignon manuscript (nearly complete) when she died, and this Lewis did.
Deeply bothered by the Second World War and the death of many in her friends and family, Cather experienced moments of sadness and fatigue during these years, but as Lewis later remembered:
“The last years were not years of decline, except in the physical sense; they were years, I think, of deeper vision, of a more penetrating sense of human life and human destiny. Willa Cather read and thought a great deal during those years. Her talk never lost its wonderfully incandescent quality, its vividness and fire.”
By this time, Cather was living a mostly secluded life. Always a private person, she remained close only to a few select friends and her steady companion, Lewis. Because she was one of the most celebrated authors of her day, she had to fight for her privacy. She even turned down honorary degrees and speaking engagements in order to be left alone.
On April 24, 1947, Cather died from a cerebral hemorrhage. A private funeral was held in New York and a memorial service was carried out at Grace Episcopal Church, the church Cather joined in 1922, in Red Cloud. Cather was buried in New Hampshire.


Epilogue
Cather burned her letters and asked others to do the same. Consequently, much of her life is still a mystery. Her works, however, have never been out of the public eye.
Scholars and critics debate which of Cather’s works is her greatest. Athough Cather received the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922) in 1923, the novel is considered by many to be among her lesser works. Inspired by the life and death of Cather’s cousin, G. P. Cather, One of Ours tells the story of Claude Wheeler, a young man from Nebraska who finds meaning in his life only by fighting and dying on the battlefields of the First World War in France. Most readers—and certainly many critics and war veterans of her day—praised the novel particularly for its “evenhanded” (yet glorified) portrait of America’s role in the war. Today, many scholars, like some critics of Cather’s day, lament the novel for its less-than-accurate details of battlefield combat and its apparently glorified and “naïve” portrait of war.
Among the novels generally considered Cather’s finest are My Ántonia, A Lost Lady, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. Cather’s poems, essays, short stories, and non-fiction have become the focus of much scholarly attention as well. As Cather’s influence continues to expand around the world, the debate over which of her works is her finest seems far from settled.

Sources and Bibliography

Bohlke, Brent L. Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986.

Cather, Willa. One of Ours. 1922. Scholarly ed. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006.

Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record. 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1976.

Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987.