Cather Studies, Volume 15: Willa Cather and Letters

Although it has long been claimed that Willa Cather destroyed most of her letters in order to protect her privacy, the record now makes clear that this is largely myth: The Complete Letters of Willa Cather digital archive has collected more than three thousand letters, and more are regularly being located. What can we learn about Cather and her fiction from such a wealth of firsthand writings? The essays in Willa Cather and Letters use a variety of approaches to consider both letters authored by Cather and letters written to her, shining new light on Cather’s relationships with her brother Roscoe Cather and her friends playwright and screenwriter Zoë Akins and opera diva Olive Fremstad.

Readers also come to understand Cather’s pleasure in artistic works produced by others, her experience of disability, and her appreciation of the GIs who read her books in Armed Services Editions. Contributors show how digital tools can be used to read across her letters at a larger scale, finding patterns and trends not discernible using conventional methods.

Melissa J. Homestead is a professor of English and program faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis and American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822–1869 and the coeditor of Cather Studies, Volume 9: Willa Cather and Modern Cultures (Nebraska, 2011), among other books.