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 university. She worked as a journalist and a high school teacher. In 1903 she published a book of poems, *April Twilight*, and in 1912 her first novel, *Alexander’s Bridge*, followed by many others.
These novels most often reflect the vast horizons of Nebraska and the often heroic life of immigrants, in a style reminiscent of Virgil, which C. derived from her classical education. Of vigorous but delicate and balanced temperament, as naturalism in its most extreme forms took hold, she increasingly withdrew into the heroic world of pioneers, now become a memory, and into the past, finally drawing close to Catholicism. Among C.’s best-known novels are: *O Pioneers* (1913); *My Ántonia* (1918; Eng. trans.: *La mia Antonia*, Turin 1947); *One of Ours* (1922), which won the Pulitzer Prize; *Death Comes for the Archbishop* (1927; Eng. trans.: *La morte viene per l’Arcivescovo*, Milan 1936); *Shadows on the Rock* (1931; Eng. trans.: *Ombre sulle rocce*, ibid. 1935); *Obscure Destinies* (1932); *Not Under Forty* (1936).