O Pioneers! - Softcover

Cather, Willa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1619492776 ISBN 13: 9781619492776

Publisher: Empire Books, 2012

Synopsis

Cather’s sentimental and somewhat controversial novel tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish pioneers that settles for life in the American prairie. While Alexandra, the family matriarch, is able to turn the family farm into a financial success, her brother Emil must grapple with the tragedy of solace and forbidden love. A novel surprisingly ahead of its time, this proto-feminist work touches upon a wide range of themes, including love, marriage, temptation, and isolation.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book

"This beautifully produced book is a joy to read and demonstrates the real pleasures to be derived from meticulous attention to detail and the highest standards of scholarship."—American Literary Scholarship.

"The first of the Cather Scholarly Editions sets a high standard of quality. . . . Text and context reveal the splendor of O Pioneers! and enrich both the experience and study of Cather’s extraordinary prose."—Western American Literature.

Willa Cather said that O Pioneers! was her first authentic novel, "the first time I walked off on my own feet—everything before was half real and half an imitation of writers whom I admired." Cather’s novel of life on the Nebraska frontier established her reputation as a writer of great note and marked a significant turning point in her artistic development. No longer would she let literary convention guide the form of her writing; the materials themselves would dictate the structure.

The paperback edition contains all the text and scholarly apparatus found in the original Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Edited according to standards set by the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, this volume presents the full range of biographical, historical, and textual information on the novel.

From the Back Cover

The land belongs to the future... that's the way it seems to me....I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while."

O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier -- and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.

At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.

About this edition

• Publisher: Empire Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1619492776
• ISBN 13: 9781619492776
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170