A Lost Lady (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition) - Hardcover

Cather, Willa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803214278 ISBN 13: 9780803214279

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1997

Synopsis

First published in 1923, A Lost Lady is one of Willa Cather’s classic novels about life on the Great Plains. It harks back to Nebraska’s early history and contrasts those days with an unsentimental portrait of the materialistic world that supplanted the frontier. In her subtle portrait of Marian Forrester, whose life unfolds in the midst of this disquieting transition, Cather created one of her most memorable and finely drawn characters. This Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of A Lost Lady is edited according to standards set by the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association. The historical essay describes the origin, writing, and reception of the novel as well as motion pictures that were later based on it; and a selection of archival photographs illuminates the connection between the novel and the people and places from Cather’s formative years in Nebraska. Explanatory notes identify locations, literary references, persons, events, and specialized terminology. The textual essays describe the production and subsequent revisions of the text.

About this title

From the Publisher

Marian Forrester is the symbolic flower of the Old American West. She draws her strength from that solid foundation, bringing delight and beauty to her elderly husband, to the small town of Sweet Water where they live, to the prairie land itself, and to the young narrator of her story, Neil Herbert. All are bewitched by her brilliance and grace, and all are ultimately betrayed. For Marian longs for "life on any terms", and in fulfilling herself, she loses all she loved and all who loved her. This, Willa Cather's most perfect novel, is not only a portrait of a troubling beauty, but also a haunting evocation of a noble age slipping irrevocably into the past.

From the Inside Flap

A portrait of a woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them and whose transformations embody the decline and coarsening of the American frontier.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0803214278
• ISBN 13: 9780803214279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 371
• Editor: Mignon Charles W., Link Frederick M., Ronning Kari A.