Overview
This is the first biography of Willa Cather to explore thoroughly the connections between her artistic and her psychological growth. O'Brien makes full use of biographical and literary materials: Cather's personal and professional correspondence, photographs, and the early short stories as well as the major fiction. Dealing openly and seriously with Cather's lesbianism, the book explores the importance of female friendships in Cather's life and work and assesses the impact that her need to conceal her sexual identity had on the creative process. Concentrating on Cather's childhood, adolescence, young womanhood, and lengthy apprenticeship, O'Brien paints the portrait of the artist as a young woman and reveals the complex interplay between Willa Cather's life and her work. In a new Preface, O'Brien sets the book in its historical context.
As a girl in Victorian-era America, Willa Cather wished to be a doctor. She assumed a male persona and maintained it for four years. As an adult, she wrote some of the classics of American literature. Here is a truly modern biography of the artist and iconoclast, rebel and writer.
Editorials
Merri Monks
By a noted Cather scholar and biographer, author of "Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice" (1987), this is an engaging and provocative biography for young adults. O'Brien defines lesbianism within the historical context of Cather's early adulthood and cites specific quotes from Cather's correspondence with Louise Pound, a close college friend, in which Cather "confessed to Louise that she thought it unfair that feminine friendships were `unnatural' . . . a code word [in the 1890s] that meant `deviant,' `aberrant,' or `homosexual.'" O'Brien contends that Cather was indeed a lesbian and that her sexuality was a contributing factor in the development of a supportive and nurturing network of women friends and companions, including Sarah Orne Jewett, who played important roles in Cather's social and creative lives. Once O'Brien establishes this point of reference, she tells the life story of a gifted writer who, without benefit of money and family connections, was highly regarded by critics and readers during her lifetime and is still valued as one of America's most important novelists. This biography in the Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbian series delves into Cather's inner creative life and the circle of women who surrounded her in a manner that Keene's "Willa Cather" does not. Included are more than 40 black-and-white photographs, a list of Cather's works, suggestions for further reading, and a chronology.Carolyn G. Heilbrum
A landmark achievement. For the first time a Cather biography follows in detail the transformation of the girl, talented and wildly unsuited to be a fined female destiny into a functioning, autonomous adult… Scholarly, open-minded, tireless [O'Brien] explores all the avenues her own investigations and other theorists have opened for her, and best provides a model for female biography…without anger or defensiveness [O'Brien] has…written a woman artist's life, seldom if ever recorded so imaginatively and, therefore, so accurately.—New York Times Book Review