CATHER, WILLA. – American writer, b. near Winchester (Virginia) on 7 Dec. 1876, d. in Nuova York on 25 Apr. 1947. She emigrated as a child to Nebraska, where she attended the university. She was a journalist and a secondary-school teacher. In 1903 she published a book of poetry, April Twilights, and in 1912 her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, which was followed by many others.
These novels preferentially reflect the vast horizons of Nebraska and the often heroic life of the immigrants, in a Virgilian style that C. derives from her classical culture. A vigorous yet delicate and balanced temperament, as naturalism asserted itself and prevailed in its most extreme forms, C. withdrew ever more deeply into the heroic world of the pioneers, by then become a memory, and into the past, ultimately drawing close to Catholicism. Among C.’s best-known novels are: O Pioneers (1913); My Antonia (1918; Italian trans.: La mia Antonia, Turin 1947); One of Ours (1922), which received 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).