Willa Cather
A Life Saved Up
Published on 5. October 1989
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-1-84408-492-0 (ISBN)
Description
A biography of Willa Cather (1873-1947), who spent years working as a journalist, teacher and editor of a New York magazine whose deepest feelings were directed towards women. Her friendships from Sarah Orne Jewett and Dorothy Canfield to Stephen Tennant and Yehudi Menuhin were important to her yet as she became more famous she withdrew increasingly from the modern world she disliked. Willa Cather's fiction charts new, female versions of epic pioneering heroism and the extraordinary cultural encounters of the New World history. This major reinterpretation of Cather's work explores that American context and those traditions but finds a strange and disconcerting Cather a writer of split identities, sexual conflict, dramatic energies and stoic fatalism. The author has written books on Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf and Philip Roth and The Short Stories of Willa Cather .
Reviews / Votes
Willa Cather could not have hoped for a more passionately sensible and insightful interpreter . . . Hermione Lee's enthusiasm for this misunderstood writer is contagious and her book is that rare thing, a scholarly study that reads well -- Maureen Freely * Observer * The biographer's enthusiasm for her subject illuminates every page. Despite her special place in American letters Willa Cather has never been much read or studied in England, and Hermione Lee . . . must be congratulated for bringing us to her measured, humane, unflinching voice * Literary Review * The biographer's enthusiasm for her subject illuminates every page -- Hilary Mantel An affectionate, meticulous study, at once intimate and impersonal * Observer * A sympathetic and illuminating study -- Nicci Gerrard * New Statesman * Willa Cather could not have hoped for a more passionately sensible and insightful interpreter . . . Hermione Lee's enthusiasm for this misunderstood writer is contagious and her book is that rare thing, a scholarly study that reads well * Maureen Freely, Observer * 'The biographer's enthusiasm for her subject illuminates every page * Hilary Mantel * A sympathetic and illuminating study * Nicci Gerrard, New Statesman * An affectionate, meticulous study, at once intimate and impersonal * OBSERVER *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Illustrations
Section: 8, b/w
Dimensions
Height: 133 mm
Width: 199 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
290 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84408-492-0 (9781844084920)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Hermione Lee (1948) grew up in London and was educated at Oxford. She began her academic career as a lecturer at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va (Instructor, 1970-1971) and at Liverpool University (Lecturer, 1971-1977). She taught at the University of York from 1977, where over twenty years she was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of English Literature.
From 1998-2008 she was the Goldsmiths' Chair of English Literature and Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford. In 2008, Lee was elected President of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross Colleges, Oxford. In 2003, she was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for Services to Literature.
From 1998-2008 she was the Goldsmiths' Chair of English Literature and Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford. In 2008, Lee was elected President of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross Colleges, Oxford. In 2003, she was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for Services to Literature.