Willa Cather

Biography

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was nine years old when her family moved from Virginia to the Nebraska Divide — the same trajectory as Jim Burden. She grew up speaking Czech and Swedish with immigrant neighbors, attended the University of Nebraska, and spent her adult career in New York and New England while continuing to write almost exclusively about the prairie of her youth. She was a lesbian who never publicly identified as such; her romantic friendship with Edith Lewis lasted forty years. This context shapes the novel's treatment of gender, desire, and the woman who refuses to fit available categories.

Willa Cather at a glance