U.S. Literature - Reference, Women Authors - American (U.S.) - Literary Criticism, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, American Literature - Bibliography, 20th Century American Literature - Pre WWII - Literary Criticism
Willa Cather, author of My Antonia and O Pioneers! and widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers, has also been dismissed in certain circles as a sentimental nostalgist, a grumpy critic of the modern world. Hermione Lee offers an alternative interpretation of a writer whose life and work were marked by fracture and dislocation, carefully suppressed or camouflaged desires, and a greater interest in the craft of writing than in an old-fashioned longing for rural simplicity. By analyzing the language and entering the landscapes of Cather's fiction, Lee provides a sensitive and perceptive account of this famously private woman and discovers an unrivaled imagination, a complexity wrongly interpreted as conservatism, and finally, a writer like no other.
About the Author, Hermione Lee
Hermione Lee is a reviewer, broadcaster, 2006 chair of the judges for the Man-Booker Prize, and the author of internationally acclaimed biographies Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf. She also edited The Short Stories of Willa Cather and wrote the introductions for Cather novels Alexander's Bridge, One of Ours, and Sapphira and the Slave Girl.
