Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I
A Collection Of Stories, Reviews And Essays
Read by David Wales
Running Time:10:23:41 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Stories and essays by Willa Cather
1 - Stories: Peter
2 - Stories: On The Divide
3 - Stories: Eric Hermannson's Soul, Part 1
4 - Stories: Eric Hermannson's Soul, Part 2
05 - Stories: Eric Hermannson's Soul, Part 3
6 - Stories: The Sentimentality Of William Tavener
7 - Stories: The Namesake
8 - Stories: The Enchanted Bluff
9 - Stories: The Joy Of Nelly Deane
0 - Stories: The Bohemian Girl, Part 1
11 - Stories: The Bohemian Girl, Part 2
12 - Stories: The Bohemian Girl, Part 3
13 - Stories: The Bohemian Girl, Part 4
14 - Stories: Consequences
15 - Stories: The Bookkeeper's Wife
16 - Stories: Ardessa
17 - Stories: Her Boss, Part 1
18 - Stories: Her Boss, Part 2
19 - Reviews And Essays: Mark Twain
20 - Reviews And Essays: William Dean Howells
21 - Reviews And Essays: Edgar Allan Poe
22 - Reviews And Essays: Walt Whitman
23 - Reviews And Essays: Henry James
24 - Reviews And Essays: Harold Frederic
25 - Reviews And Essays: Kate Chopin
26 - Reviews And Essays: Stephen Crane
27 - Reviews And Essays: Frank Norris
28 - Reviews And Essays: When I Knew Stephen Crane
29 - Reviews And Essays: On The Art Of Fiction
A Lost Lady
Read by Rob Marland
Running Time:03:51:22 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
The young Niel Herbert idolizes Marian Forrester, the beautiful and charismatic wife of a pioneering railroad magnate. After discovering Mrs Forrester’s affair with another man, Herbert loses faith in her and all he thought she represented. Content warning for one use of the N-word.
Alexander's Bridge
Read by E. Tavano
Running Time:2:40:28 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Bartley Alexander is a construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges going through what's known today (but not in 1912) as a mid-life crisis. Although married to his wife Winifred, Bartley resumes his acquaintance with a former lover, Hilda Burgoyne, in London. The affair proves to gnaw at Bartley's sense of propriety and honor.
April Twilights and Other Poems
Read by Multiple Readers
Running Time:01:07:45 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
A selection of thirty-six poems by American writer Willa Cather.
1 - “Grandmither, think not I forget”
2 - Fides, Spes
3 - The Tavern
4 - The Hawthorn Tree
5 - The Poor Minstrel
6 - Antinous
7 - London Roses
8 - Winter at Delphi
9 - Paradox
10 - In Media Vita
11 - Evening Song
12 - Lament for Marsyas
13 - “I Sought the Wood in Winter”
14 - “Sleep, Minstrel, Sleep”
15 - In Rose-Time
16 - Poppies on Ludlow Castle
17 - Prairie Dawn
18 - Aftermath
19 - Thou Art the Pearl
20 - Arcadian Winter
21 - Provençal Legend
22 - The Encore
23 - Song
24 - L’Envoi
25 - The Palatine
26 - The Gaul in the Capitol
27 - A Likeness
28 - The Swedish Mother
29 - Spanish Johnny
30 - Autumn Melody
31 - Prairie Spring
32 - Macon Prairie
33 - Street in Packingtown
34 - A Silver Cup
35 - Recognition
36 - Going Home
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Read by Carol Pelster
Running Time:08:11:07 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop" is a historical novel set in New Mexico in the mid-19th century. The book follows the missionary life of the first Catholic bishop of the new American territory of New Mexico. His vast diocese is almost completely unknown to Europe and the United States. But the wonders of the geography and the attraction of its peoples are gradually opened up to the appreciation of the new bishop. The author marvelously conveys her love for the beautiful land and its variety of people. The book is mainly a series of stories about the characters of the Navahos, Pueblos, Mexicans, Americans, and a fellow French missionary, whose lives intersect with the bishop's life.
My Ántonia
Read by Multiple Readers
Running Time:8:06:37 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book’s narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia’s life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that lens.
My Mortal Enemy
Read by Amy Dunkleberger
Running Time:02:02:07 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
In the small Midwestern town of Parthia, Myra Henshawe was a legend. The grandniece and ward of Parthia’s richest resident, Myra had shocked the locals by sacrificing her inheritance to run off and marry her true love Oswald. Thirty-odd years later, the still feisty Myra, now enjoying a sophisticated life with Oswald in New York, takes Nellie, the teenage niece of her oldest friend, under her wing. From Myra, Nellie discovers not only the fineness of art and culture, but the mysterious intricacies of friendship and romance as well.
O Pioneers!
Read by Rachel Ellen
Running Time:5:48:17 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near Hanover, Nebraska, (a fictional town near Glenvil) around the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie. The novel also concerns two romantic relationships - one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Lindstrom, and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata.
One of Ours
Read by Tom Weiss
Running Time:13:35:33 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
This 1923 Pulitzer Prize winning novel was written by Willa Cather. This work had been inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother. He was the first officer from Nebraska killed in World War I. Claude Wheeler, the subject of the novel, is a young man growing up on a Nebraska farm. The son of well to do parents, Claude is troubled by his apparent inability to find purpose with his life. Everything he does seems to turn out wrong, at least in his own mind. Although he is a skilled farmer, Claude believes his destiny lies elsewhere. While attending a church-affiliated college his parents have selected for him, he befriends a German family (the Ehrlichs’) who open his eyes to other possibilities in life. When Claude’s father expands the Wheeler farming interests, Claude must leave college to return to his roots and operate the Wheeler farm. During this period, he marries a childhood friend, Enid, in what turns out to be a marriage of convenience rather than love. Enid tries to convert her new husband to her many other causes such as Prohibition in Nebraska. Eventually, Enid leaves Claude to care for her missionary sister who is ill in China, and Claude is somewhat relieved to see her go. During this period, Europe is ablaze with World War I. Claude and his mother fervently follow the events. Claude eventually enlists in the American Expeditionary Forces, becomes an officer, and travels to France to fight for the cause. Finally believing he has found purpose in his life, Claude revels in his new freedom and responsibilities. Despite an influenza epidemic and the continuing hardships of the battlefield, Claude has never felt as though he mattered more. His pursuit of vague notions of purpose and principle culminate in a ferocious front-line encounter with an overwhelming German onslaught.
The Professor's House
Read by Amy Dunkleberger
Running Time:06:38:10 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
A portrait of Americas many social groups with the chief interest centered on a university professor and his family
The Song of the Lark
Read in English by E. Tavano; Mary Agnes Katherine; Denise Nordell;
Kate Sterner; Jackie Drown; Shih Ping and Deon Gines
Running Time:16:20:55 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Set in the 1890s in Moonstone, a fictional place supposedly located in Colorado, The Song of the Lark is the self-portrait of an artist in the making. The story revolves around an ambitious young heroine, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her hometown to go to the big city to fulfill her dream of becoming a famous opera star.
The novel captures Thea's independent-mindedness, her strong work ethic, and her ascent to her highest achievement. At each step along the way, her realization of the mediocrity of her peers propels her to greater levels of accomplishment, but in the course of her ascent she must discard those relationships which no longer serve her.
Youth and the Bright Medusa, and The Troll Garden
Read by David Wales
Running Time:10:08:05 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Youth And The Bright Medusa comprises eight short stories published in 1920. Four of them (The Sculptor’s Funeral; A Death In The Desert; A Wagner Matinee; Paul’s Case) are re-worked from an earlier collection, The Troll Garden, published in 1905. This LibriVox recording contains in addition the three stories (Flavia And Her Artists; The Garden Lodge; The Marriage Of Phaedra) from that earlier work omitted in the later book. In other words, all the stories in both books are recorded here.