Note on the text -- The text of my Ántonia -- Contexts and backgrounds -- BIOGRAPHICAL AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS. Edith Lewis / My Ántonia -- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant / From Willa Cather: a memoir -- Willa Cather talks of work -- Latrobe Carroll / Willa Sibert Cather -- W. D. Edson / A talk with Miss Cather -- Eleanor Hinman / Interview with Willa Cather -- Willa Cather raps language law and antles boxing regulations -- State laws are cramping -- Myrtle Mason / Nebraska scored for its many laws by Willa Cather -- Rose C. Feld Restlessness such as ours does not make for beauty -- LETTERS. Letters to and from family and friends -- Letters from Anna Pavelka -- Letters to and from Cather's publisher -- Letters from readers -- AMERICANIZATION AND IMMIGRATION. Willa Cather / Peter -- Guy Reynolds / My Ántonia and the Americanisation debate -- Helen Varick Boswell / Promoting Americanization -- Woodrow Wilson / The meaning of citizenship -- Peter Roberts / The problem of Americanization -- Henry Pratt Fairchild / Americanization -- Edward Alsworth Ross / American blood and immigrant blood -- Horace M. Kallen / Democracy vs. the melting pot -- Randolph Bourne / Trans-national America -- Sarka B. Hrbkova / Bohemians in Nebraska -- Rose Rosicky / Bohemian cemeteries in Nebraska -- Willa Cather / Nebraska: the end of the first cycle -- Criticism -- CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS OF MY ÁNTONIA. New York Times book review article -- My Nebraska Antonia -- Two portraits -- C. L. H. / Struggles with the soil -- Booklist review -- H[enry] W[alcott] Boynton / Bookman review -- Randolph Bourne / Morals and art from the West -- N. P. D[awson] / Miss Cather's My Ántonia -- Independent review -- H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken / Sunrise on the prairie: VII -- H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken / Mainly fiction -- Paper dolls or people? -- C[arl] E[ric] Bechhofer / Impressions of recent American literature IV -- Harry Hanson / The first reader: My Ántonia revised -- Elia W. Peattie / Miss Cather writes exceptional novel in My Ántonia -- MODERN CRITICAL REVIEWS. Terence Martin / The drama of memory in My Ántonia -- Blanche H. Gelfant / The forgotten reaping-hook: sex in My Ántonia -- Jean Schwind / The Benda illustrations to My Ántonia: Cather's "silent" supplement to Jim Burden's narrative -- Richard H. Millington / Willa Cather and "The storyteller": hostility to the novel in My Ántonia -- Susan J. Rosowski / Pro/creativity and a kinship aesthetic -- Mike Fischer / Pastoralism and its discontents: Willa Cather and the burden of imperialism -- Janis Stout / Coming to America / escaping to Europe -- Marilee Lindemann / "It ain't my prairie": gender, power, and narrative in My Ántonia -- Linda Joyce Brown / "This hideous little pickaninny" and the formation of Bohemian whiteness: race, cultural pluralism, and Willa Cather's My Ántonia -- Willa Cather: a chronology.
Summary:
"Set in the Nebraska landscape in a community evocative of Cather's own (Red Cloud), My Antonia tells the story of Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant, and Jim Burden, who like Cather was uprooted from Virginia to the Nebraska prairie. Antonia and Jim, like many of the other characters in this 1918 novel, are based on Cather's childhood friends. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the first published edition of the novel (1918). It is accompanied by explanatory footnotes, key illustrations, and introduction that gives readers an historical overview of both author and novel, and a note on the text. "Contexts and Backgrounds" is a rich collection of materials organized around the novel's central themes: "Autobiographical and Biographical Writings," "Letters," and "Americanization and Immigration." Willa Cather, Edith Lewis, Latrobe Carroll, Rose C. Feld, Guy Reynolds, Woodrow Wilson, Peter Roberts, Horace M. Kallen, Sarka B. Hrbkova, and Rose Rosicky, among others, are included. "Criticism" spans a century of scholarship on Willa Cather and My Antonia, from contemporary reviews by Henry Walcott Boynton, H. L. Mencken, and Elia W. Peattie to recent critical assessments by Terence Martin, Blanche Gelfant, Jean Schwind, Richard H. Millington, Susan Rosowski, Mike Fischer, Janis Stout, Marilee Lindemann, and Linda Joyce Brown. A chronology of Cather's life and work and a selected bibliography are also included" -- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.