CATHER, WILLA. - American writer, b. near Winchester (Virginia) on 7 Dec. 1876, d. in New York on 25 Apr. 1947. She emigrated as a child to Nebraska, where she attended the University. She was a journalist and a high-school teacher. In 1903 she published a book of poems, April Twilights, and in 1912 her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, which was followed by many others.

These novels reflect by preference the vast horizons of Nebraska and the often heroic life of immigrants, in a Virgilian style that C. derives from her classical culture. A vigorous temperament, but delicate and balanced, with the advance and predominance of naturalism in its most extreme forms, C. withdrew more and more into the heroic world of the pioneers, by then become a memory, and into the past, drawing definitively closer to Catholicism. Among C.'s best-known novels, mention should be made of: O Pioneers (1913); My Antonia (1918; Italian trans.: La mia Antonia, Turin 1947); One of Ours (1922), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927; Italian trans.: La morte viene per l'Arcivescovo, Milan 1936); Shadows on the Rock (1931; Italian trans.: Ombre sulle rocce, ibid. 1935); Obscure Destinies (1932); Not Under Forty (1936).

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: R. Michaud, Le roman américain d'aujourd'hui, Paris 1926, pp. 206-14; A. Kazin, On Native Grounds, New York 1942, pp. 247-57.

Amata Martorelli

@incollection{ec3_cather_willa, author = {Martorelli, Amata}, title = {Cather, willa}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {1161}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/cather-willa} }

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Cather, Willa

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