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113-630: Willa Sibert Cather ( / ˈ k æ ð ər / ; born Wilella Sibert Cather ; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains , including O Pioneers! , The Song of the Lark , and My Ántonia . In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I . Willa Cather and her family moved from Virginia to Webster County , Nebraska, when she

226-445: A broad denuded area as a piedmont deposit by the rivers which issued from the mountains. Since then, it has been more or less dissected by the erosion of valleys. The central section of the plains thus presents a marked contrast to the northern section. While the northern section owes its smoothness to the removal of local gravels and sands from a formerly uneven surface by the action of degrading rivers and their inflowing tributaries,

339-602: A broad stretch of country underlain by nearly horizontal strata extending westward from the 97th meridian west to the base of the Rocky Mountains , a distance of 300 to 500 mi (480 to 800 km). It extends northward from the Mexican boundary far into Canada. Although the altitude of the plains increases gradually from 600 ft (180 m) or 1,200 ft (370 m) on the east to 4,000–5,000 ft (1,200–1,500 m) or 6,000 ft (1,800 m) near

452-456: A child, she visited immigrant families in her area and returned home in "the most unreasonable state of excitement," feeling that she "had got inside another person's skin." After a trip to Red Cloud in 1916, Cather decided to write a novel based on the events in the life of her childhood friend Annie Sadilek Pavelka , a Bohemian girl who became the model for the title character in My Ántonia . Cather

565-797: A few horses were found by the Spanish among the Indians living at the mouth of the Colorado River of Texas and the Caddo of eastern Texas had a sizeable number. Daily Nebraskan The website publishes every school day during the fall and spring semesters, with the exceptions of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break and the last four days of finals week. It publishes weekly during summer sessions. The Daily Nebraskan covers campus and Lincoln news, along with arts, entertainment, and sports. There

678-412: A frontier state, was a formative experience for her: She was moved by the dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the prairie, and the various cultures of the immigrant and Native American families in the area. In 1896, Cather was hired to write for a women's magazine, Home Monthly , and moved to Pittsburgh . There, she wrote journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetry. A year later, after

791-603: A gradual transition, this rainfall line may be taken to divide the drier plains from the moister prairies. However, in Canada the eastern boundary of the plains is well defined by the presence of the Canadian Shield to the northeast. The plains (within the United States) may be described in northern, intermediate, central and southern sections, in relation to certain peculiar features. In Canada, no such division

904-477: A heart attack. Cather was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. Four months later, Isabelle McClung died. Cather and McClung had lived together when Cather first arrived in Pittsburgh, and while McClung eventually married the musician Jan Hambourg and moved with her husband to Toronto, the two women remained devoted friends. Cather wrote that Isabelle was the person for whom she wrote all her books. During

1017-533: A lesbian is rooted in treating same-sex desire "as an insult to Cather and her reputation", rather than a neutral historical perspective. Melissa Homestead has argued that Cather was attracted to Edith Lewis, and in so doing, asked: "What kind of evidence is needed to establish this as a lesbian relationship? Photographs of the two of them in bed together? She was an integral part of Cather's life, creatively and personally." Beyond her own relationships with women, Cather's reliance on male characters has been used to support

1130-448: A middle ground, selecting facts from experience on the basis of feeling and then presenting the experience in a lucid, objective style. The English novelist A. S. Byatt has written that with each work Cather reinvented the novel form to investigate the changes in the human condition over time. Particularly in her frontier novels, Cather wrote of both the beauty and terror of life. Like the exiled characters of Henry James, an author who had

1243-520: A novel set in Avignon , France. She had titled it Hard Punishments and placed it in the 14th century during the reign of Antipope Benedict XIV . She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. The same year, she executed a will that prohibited the publication of her letters and dramatization of her works. In 1944, she received the gold medal for fiction from

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1356-457: A novel. She had no more reason to follow Gertrude Stein and James Joyce , whose work she respected, than they did to follow her. Her style solves the problems in which she was interested. She wanted to stand midway between the journalists whose omniscient objectivity accumulate more fact than any character could notice and the psychological novelist whose use of subjective point of view stories distorts objective reality. She developed her theory on

1469-543: A popular writer whose novels and short story collections continued to sell well; in 1931 Shadows on the Rock was the most widely read novel in the United States, and Lucy Gayheart became a bestseller in 1935. Although Cather made her last trip to Red Cloud in 1931 for a family gathering after her mother's death, she stayed in touch with her Red Cloud friends and sent money to Annie Pavelka and other families during

1582-519: A significant influence on the author, most of Cather's major characters live as exiled immigrants, identifying with the immigrants' "sense of homelessness and exile" following her own feelings of exile living on the frontier. It is through their engagement with their environment that they gain their community. Susan J. Rosowski wrote that Cather was perhaps the first to grant immigrants a respectable position in American literature. In 1962, Willa Cather

1695-594: A west-northwest direction in what is now Oklahoma and Texas which is now known as the De Soto Trail. The Spanish thought that the Great Plains were the location of the mythological Quivira and Cíbola , a place said to be rich in gold. People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward,

1808-404: Is about 500 mi (800 km) east to west and 2,000 mi (3,200 km) north to south. Much of the region was home to American bison herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late-19th century. It has an area of approximately 500,000 sq mi (1,300,000 km ). Current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by this map at

1921-468: Is also an opinion page featuring student columnists. In addition, other articles published include the 1948 Nebraska parking riots, the campus strike of 1970, and articles that were written by Warren Buffett's parents. The Daily Nebraskan was first published as a monthly and a weekly edition before becoming a daily paper. Its official birthday is June 13, 1901. As the newspaper's style and content changed, so did its identity and moniker. From 1871 to 1885,

2034-526: Is extraordinarily smooth. It is very dry, except for occasional shallow and temporary water sheets after rains. Llano is separated from the plains on the north by the mature consequent valley of the Canadian River , and from the mountains on the west by the broad and probably mature valley of the Pecos River . On the east, it is strongly undercut by the retrogressive erosion of the headwaters of

2147-448: Is not universal; some critics have charged Cather with being out of touch with her times and failing to use more experimental techniques in her writing, such as stream of consciousness . At the same time, others have sought to place Cather alongside modernists by either pointing to the extreme effects of her apparently simple Romanticism or acknowledging her own "middle ground": She had formed and matured her ideas on art before she wrote

2260-405: Is often marked by—and criticized for—its nostalgic tone and themes drawn from memories of her early years on the American plains. Consequently, a sense of place is integral to her work: notions of land, the frontier, pioneering and relationships with western landscapes are recurrent. Even when her heroines were placed in an urban environment, the influence of place was critical, and the way that power

2373-506: Is peculiarly elaborate. Known as the Badlands , it is a minutely dissected form with a relief of a few hundred feet. This is due to several causes: The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42° and 36° , occupying eastern Colorado and western Kansas , is mostly a dissected fluviatile plain. That is, this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on

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2486-455: Is used: the climatic and vegetation regions are more impactful on human settlement than mere topography, and therefore the region is split into (from north to south), the taiga plains, boreal plains , aspen parkland , and prairie ecoregion regions. The northern section of the Great Plains, north of latitude 44° , includes eastern Montana , eastern Wyoming , most of North Dakota and South Dakota , southwestern Minnesota and portions of

2599-563: The American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americus), Salt Creek Tiger Beetle (Cinidela nevadica lincolniana), Great Plains Giant Tiger Beetle (Amblycheila chylindriformis), Microstylum morosum , Bean leaf beetle (Cerotoma trifurcata), Great Plains Camel Cricket (Daihinia brevipes), and the Great plains spittlebug (Lepyronia gibbosa). Some species in the Great plains have gone extinct in

2712-593: The Arikara , Mandan , Pawnee , and Wichita . Wars with the Ojibwe and Cree peoples pushed the Lakota (Teton Sioux) west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late-17th century. The Shoshone originated in the western Great Basin and spread north and east into present-day Idaho and Wyoming. By 1500, some Eastern Shoshone had crossed the Rocky Mountains into the Great Plains. After 1750, warfare and pressure from

2825-626: The Central United States and Western Canada , encompassing: The term "Great Plains" is used in the United States to describe a sub-section of the even more vast Interior Plains physiographic division, which covers much of the interior of North America. It also has currency as a region of human geography , referring to the Plains Indians or the Plains states . In Canada the term is rarely used; Natural Resources Canada ,

2938-690: The Commission for Environmental Cooperation , a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agency composed of the geographical agencies of the Mexican, American, and Canadian governments, uses the "Great Plains" as an ecoregion synonymous with predominant prairies and grasslands rather than as physiographic region defined by topography. The Great Plains ecoregion includes five sub-regions: Temperate Prairies, West-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, South-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, Texas Louisiana Coastal Plains, and Tamaulipas-Texas Semi-Arid Plain, which overlap or expand upon other Great Plains designations. The region

3051-705: The Daily Halfaskan . Like the front page included on the left, the satirical papers published on April Fools were humorous and lampooned facets of university life in Nebraska. Students of satire at UNL found this single issue of satire too limiting a venue and decided to launch an additional student paper. In 2008, The DailyER was launched as a bi-weekly publication dedicated to satirical and radical news. Katherine, Walter. "About The Daily Nebraskan" . Nebraska Newspapers . University of Nebraska-Lincoln . Retrieved 25 October 2016 . This site allows users

3164-825: The Department of the Interior . In contrast, U.S. Forest Service , an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture , administers the National Forests and National Grasslands, under a multiple-use concept. By law, the U.S. Forest Service must consider all resources, with no single resource emphasized to the detriment of others, including water, soil, grazing, timber harvesting, and minerals (mining and drilling), as well as recreation and conservation of fish and wildlife. Each individual state also administers state lands, typically smaller areas, for various purposes including conservation and recreation. Grasslands are among

3277-908: The Great Plains toad ( Anaxyrus cognatus ), plains leopard frog ( Lithobates blairi ), and plains spadefoot toad ( Spea bombifrons ). Some species predominately associated with various river basins in the Great Plains include sturgeon chub ( Macrhybopsis gelida ), peppered chub ( Macrhybopsis tetranema ), prairie chub ( Macrhybopsis australis ), western silvery minnow ( Hybognathus argyritis ), plains minnow ( Hybognathus placitus ), smalleye shiner ( Notropis buccula ), Arkansas River shiner ( Notropis girardi ), Red River shiner ( Notropis bairdi ), Topeka shiner ( Notropis topeka ), plains topminnow ( Fundulus sciadicus ), plains killifish ( Fundulus zebrinus ), Red River pupfish ( Cyprinodon rubrofluviatilis ), and Arkansas darter ( Etheostoma cragini ). The great plains also has many invertebrate species living here both alive and extinct such as

3390-630: The Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century. Two of her three other novels of the decade— A Lost Lady and The Professor's House —elevated her literary status dramatically. She was invited to give several hundred lectures to the public, earned significant royalties, and sold the movie rights to A Lost Lady . Her other novel of the decade, the 1926 My Mortal Enemy , received no widespread acclaim—and in fact, neither she nor her life partner, Edith Lewis , made significant mention of it later in their lives. Despite her success, she

3503-650: The National Institute of Arts and Letters , a prestigious award given for an author's total accomplishments. Cather was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1945 and underwent a mastectomy on January 14, 1946. By early 1947, her cancer had metastasized to her liver, becoming stage IV cancer .On April 24, 1947, Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 73 in her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan . After Cather's death, Edith Lewis destroyed

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3616-772: The 14-part series. Milmine had performed copious amounts of research, but she had been unable to produce a manuscript independently, and McClure's employed Cather and a few other editors including Burton J. Hendrick to assist her. This biography was serialized in McClure's over the next eighteen months and then published in book form as The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (attributed to author Georgina Milmine, only confirmed decades later as really Willa Cather). McClure's also serialized Cather's first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912). While most reviews were favorable, such as The Atlantic calling

3729-594: The 1920s—save for one printing of her short story collection Youth and the Bright Medusa —matched in design on their second and subsequent printings. By this time, Cather was firmly established as a major American writer , receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her World War I-based novel, One of Ours . She followed this up with the popular Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1927, selling 86,500 copies in just two years, and which has been included on

3842-556: The Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward. Some of them moved as far south as Texas, emerging as the Comanche by 1700. The first known contact between Europeans and Indians in the Great Plains occurred in what is now Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540 to 1542 with the arrival of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado , a Spanish conquistador. In that same period, Hernando de Soto crossed

3955-503: The Canadian provinces including southeastern Alberta , southern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba . The strata here are Cretaceous or early Tertiary , lying nearly horizontal. The surface is shown to be a plain of degradation by a gradual ascent here and there to the crest of a ragged escarpment, the escarpment-remnant of a resistant stratum. There are also the occasional lava -capped mesas and dike formed ridges, surmounting

4068-462: The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln . This definition, however, is primarily ecological, not physiographic. The Boreal Plains of Western Canada are physiographically the same, but differentiated by their tundra and forest (rather than grassland) appearance. The term "Great Plains", for the region west of about the 96th meridian west and east of the Rocky Mountains ,

4181-557: The Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback. The real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico and the capture of thousands of horses and other livestock. In 1683 a Spanish expedition into Texas found horses among Native people. In 1690,

4294-678: The Depression years. In 1932, Cather published Obscure Destinies , her final collection of short fiction, which contained " Neighbour Rosicky ," one of her most highly regarded stories. That same summer, she moved into a new apartment on Park Avenue with Edith Lewis, and during a visit on Grand Manan, she probably began working on her next novel, Lucy Gayheart . She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934. Cather suffered two devastating losses in 1938. In June, her favorite brother, Douglass, died of

4407-551: The Great Plains and into the valleys and lower elevations of the eastern Rocky Mountains and portions of the American southwest . Other snakes include the plains hog-nosed snake ( Heterodon nasicus ), western milksnake ( Lampropeltis gentilis ), great plains ratsnake ( Pantherophis emoryi ), bullsnake ( Pituophis catenifer sayi ), plains black-headed snake ( Tantilla nigriceps ), plains gartersnake ( Thamnophis radix ), and lined snake ( Tropidoclonion lineatum ). Reptile diversity increases significantly in southern regions of

4520-629: The Great Plains and that included trade networks west to the Rocky Mountains. Mississippians settled the Great Plains at sites now in Oklahoma and South Dakota . Siouan language speakers may have originated in the lower Mississippi River region. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries. Pressure from other Indian tribes, themselves driven west and south by

4633-588: The Great Plains include National Parks and National Monuments, administers by the National Park Service with the responsibility of preserving ecological and historical places and making them available to the public. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service manages the National Wildlife Refuges, with the primary responsibility of conserving and protecting fish, wildlife, plants, and habitat in the public trust. Both are agencies of

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4746-476: The Great Plains include the swift fox ( Vulpes velox ) and the endangered black-footed ferret ( Mustela nigripes ). The lesser prairie chicken ( Tympanuchus pallidicinctus ) is endemic to the Great Plains and the distribution of the greater prairie chicken ( Tympanuchus cupido ) predominantly occurs in the region, although the latter historically ranged further eastward. The Harris's sparrow ( Zonotrichia querula ) spends winter months in southern areas of

4859-512: The Great Plains is the most tornado active area in the world and is sometimes referred to as Tornado Alley . The Great Plains are part of the floristic North American Prairies province , which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians . Although the American bison ( Bison bison ) historically ranged throughout much of North America (from New York to Oregon and Canada to northern Mexico), they are strongly associated with

4972-751: The Great Plains where they once roamed in immense herds. Pronghorn ( Antilocapra americana ) range into western areas of the region. The black-tailed prairie dog ( Cynomys ludovicianus ) is another iconic species among several rodents that are linked to the region including the thirteen-lined ground squirrel ( Ictidomys tridecemlineatus ), spotted ground squirrel ( Xerospermophilus spilosoma ), Franklin's ground squirrel ( Poliocitellus franklinii ), plains pocket gopher ( Geomys bursarius ), hispid pocket mouse ( Chaetodipus hispidus ), olive-backed pocket mouse ( Perognathus fasciatus ), plains pocket mouse ( Perognathus flavescens ), and plains harvest mouse ( Reithrodontomys montanus ), Two carnivores associated with

5085-488: The Great Plains. The ornate box turtle ( Terrapene ornata ) and great plains skink ( Plestiodon obsoletus ) occur in southern areas. Although few salamanders are strongly associated with region, the western tiger salamander ( Ambystoma mavortium ) ranges through much of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, as does the Rocky Mountain toad ( Anaxyrus w. woodhousi ). Other anurans related to region include

5198-503: The High Plains) is periodically subjected to extended periods of drought ; high winds in the region may then generate devastating dust storms . The eastern Great Plains near the eastern boundary falls in the humid subtropical climate zone in the southern areas, and the northern and central areas fall in the humid continental climate . Many thunderstorms occur in the plains in the spring through summer. The southeastern portion of

5311-481: The Lincoln Courier before going abroad with Isabelle McClung that summer. Her first book, a collection of poetry called April Twilights , was published in 1903. Shortly after this, in 1905, Cather's first collection of short stories, The Troll Garden , was published. It contained some of her most famous stories, including " A Wagner Matinee ," " The Sculptor's Funeral ," and " Paul's Case ." After Cather

5424-650: The Red, Brazos, and Colorado rivers of Texas and presents a ragged escarpment approximately 500 to 800 ft (150 to 240 m) high, overlooking the central denuded area of that state. There, between the Brazos and Colorado rivers, occurs a series of isolated outliers capped by limestone that underlies both the Llano Uplift on the west and the Grand Prairies escarpment on the east. The southern and narrow part of

5537-751: The U.S. state of Nebraska donated a bronze sculpture of Cather by Littleton Alston to the National Statuary Hall Collection . The statue is installed in the United States Capitol 's Capitol Visitors Center , in Washington, D.C. Great Plains The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flatland in North America . The region is located just to the east of the Rocky Mountains , much of it covered in prairie , steppe , and grassland . They are

5650-715: The Unsentimental " in the Home Monthly , about a Nebraskan girl with a masculine name who looks like a boy and saves her father's bank business. Janis P. Stout calls this story one of several Cather works that "demonstrate the speciousness of rigid gender roles and give favorable treatment to characters who undermine conventions." Cather resigned from her job at the Pittsburgh Leader in the late spring of 1900 before relocating to Washington, D.C. that fall. In April 1902, Cather published her final contribution to

5763-501: The apartment was scheduled for demolition during the construction of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue New York City Subway line (now the 1 , ​ 2 , and ​ 3 trains). While Lewis was selected as the literary trustee for Cather's estate, she was not merely a secretary for Cather's documents but an integral part of Cather's creative process. Beginning in 1922, Cather spent summers on

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5876-716: The area of the ancient Great Plains for thousands to millions of years. The vast majority of these animals became extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene (around 13,000 years ago). A number of significant fossil sites are located in the Great Plains including Agate Fossil Beds National Monument ( Nebraska ), Ashfall Fossil Beds ( Nebraska ), Clayton Lake State Park ( New Mexico ), Dinosaur Valley State Park ( Texas ), Hudson-Meng Bison Kill (Nebraska), Makoshika State Park (Montana), and The Mammoth Site ( South Dakota ). Public and protected lands in

5989-471: The central section, it is for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain. However, the lower lands which surround it on all sides place it in such strong relief that it stands up as a table-land, known from the time of Mexican occupation as the Llano Estacado . It measures roughly 150 mi (240 km) east-west and 400 mi (640 km) north-south. It is of very irregular outline, narrowing to

6102-616: The death of Cather's nephew and second literary executor, Charles Cather. Willa Cather's correspondence revealed the complexity of her character and inner world. The letters do not disclose any intimate details about Cather's personal life, but they do "make clear that [her] primary emotional attachments were to women." The Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln works to digitize her complete body of writing, including private correspondence and published work. As of 2021, about 2,100 letters have been made freely available to

6215-531: The encroachment of European settlers as well as economic incentives such as the fur trade, alongside the arrival of the horse and firearms from Europe pushed multiple tribes onto the Great Plains. Among those to have lived on the Great Plains were the Blackfoot , Crow , Sioux , Cheyenne , Arapaho , Comanche , and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived at Etzanoa and in semi-permanent villages of earth lodges, such as

6328-658: The fall of 2017, the DN was to complete its transition to a digital-first publication at its dailynebraskan.com web address, and print a monthly newsmagazine. Throughout its publication, the Daily Nebraskan has always included pieces of satire. For most of its history the paper collected articles with a satirical tone over the course of the year and assembled them together for the April 1st publication. Iterations of this special daily edition were sometimes jokingly referred to as

6441-575: The family into the town of Red Cloud , where he opened a real estate and insurance business, and the children attended school for the first time. Some of Cather's earliest work was first published in the Red Cloud Chief, the city's local paper, and Cather read widely, having made friends with a Jewish couple, the Wieners, who offered her free access to their extensive library in Red Cloud. At

6554-433: The general level by 500 ft (150 m) or more and manifestly demonstrating the widespread erosion of the surrounding plains. All these reliefs are more plentiful towards the mountains in central Montana. The peneplain is no longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production. It appears to have suffered a regional uplift or increase in elevation, for the upper Missouri River and its branches no longer flow on

6667-650: The government department responsible for official mapping, treats the Interior Plains as one unit consisting of several related plateaus and plains. There is no region referred to as the "Great Plains" in the Atlas of Canada . In terms of human geography, the term prairie is more commonly used in Canada, and the region is known as the Canadian Prairies , prairie provinces or simply "the prairies". The North American Environmental Atlas , produced by

6780-760: The great plains like the Rocky Mountain Locust (Melanoplus spretus). During the Cretaceous Period (145–66 million years ago), the Great Plains were covered by a shallow inland sea called the Western Interior Seaway . However, during the Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene (65–55 million years ago), the seaway had begun to recede, leaving behind thick marine deposits and a relatively flat terrain which

6893-411: The idea of her same-sex attraction. Harold Bloom calls her "erotically evasive in her art" due to prevailing "societal taboos". In any event, throughout Cather's adult life, her closest relationships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound ; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for prolonged visits;

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7006-465: The illustrations she commissioned for the book from Władysław T. Benda . What's more, the physical quality of the books was poor. That year, she turned to the young publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf , which had a reputation for supporting its authors through advertising campaigns. She also liked the look of its books and had been impressed with its edition of Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson . She so enjoyed their style that all her Knopf books of

7119-612: The island of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, where she bought a cottage in Whale Cove on the Bay of Fundy . This is where her short story "Before Breakfast" is set. She valued the seclusion of the island and did not mind that her cottage had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity. Anyone wishing to reach her could do so by telegraph or mail. In 1940, she stopped visiting Grand Manan after Canada's entrance to World War II , as travel

7232-501: The largest group. They rise like a large island from the sea, occupying an oval area of about 100 mi (160 km) north-south by 50 mi (80 km) east-west. At Black Elk Peak , they reach an altitude of 7,216 ft (2,199 m) and have an effective relief over the plains of 2,000 or 3,000 ft (610 or 910 m) This mountain mass is of flat-arched, dome-like structure, now well dissected by radiating consequent streams. The weaker uppermost strata have been eroded down to

7345-411: The last 39 years of her life with her domestic partner, Edith Lewis , before being diagnosed with breast cancer and dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Cather and Lewis are buried together in Jaffrey, New Hampshire . Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states , many of them European immigrants in

7458-468: The least protected biomes. Humans have converted much of the prairies for agricultural purposes or to create pastures. Several of the protected lands in the region are centered around aberrant and uncharacteristic features of the region, such as mountains, outcrops, and canyons (e.g. Devil's Tower National Monument , Wind Cave National Park , Scotts Bluff National Monument ), and as splendid and worthy as they are, they are not primarily focused on conserving

7571-426: The level of the plains where their upturned edges are evenly truncated. The next following harder strata have been sufficiently eroded to disclose the core of underlying igneous and metamorphic crystalline rocks in about half of the domed area. In the intermediate section of the plains, between latitudes 44° and 42° , including southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska , the erosion of certain large districts

7684-424: The line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receives 20 in (510 mm) or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 in (510 mm). In this context, the High Plains, as well as Southern Alberta , south-western Saskatchewan and Eastern Montana are mainly semi arid steppe land and are generally characterised by rangeland or marginal farmland . The region (especially

7797-535: The lines wonderful? Do you know where it came from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation . I identified episode after episode, Catherized. Poor woman, she had to get her war experience somewhere." In 1929, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . By the 1930s, an increasingly large share of critics began to dismiss her as overly romantic and nostalgic, unable to grapple with contemporary issues: Granville Hicks , for instance, charged Cather with escaping into an idealized past to avoid confronting

7910-500: The magazine was sold, she became a telegraph editor and critic for the Pittsburgh Leader and frequently contributed poetry and short fiction to The Library , another local publication. In Pittsburgh, she taught Latin, algebra, and English composition at Central High School for one year; she then taught English and Latin at Allegheny High School , where she came to head the English department. Shortly after moving to Pittsburgh, Cather wrote short stories, including publishing " Tommy,

8023-644: The manuscript of Hard Punishments according to Cather's instructions. She is buried at the southwest corner of Jaffrey, New Hampshire 's Old Burying Ground, a place she first visited when joining Isabelle McClung and her husband, violinist Jan Hambourg , at the Shattuck Inn. Lewis was buried alongside Cather some 25 years later. Novels Short fiction Poetry Nonfiction and Prose Collections Scholars disagree about Cather's sexual identity. Some believe it impossible or anachronistic to determine whether she had same-sex attraction, while others disagree. Researcher Deborah Carlin suggests that denial of Cather being

8136-760: The more common "prairie". The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains , which extend east to the Appalachian Plateau . The United States Geological Survey divides the Great Plains in the United States into ten physiographic subdivisions: Further to this can be added Canadian physiographic sub-regions such as the Alberta Plain, Cypress Hills , Manitoba Escarpment (eastward), Manitoba Plain, Missouri Coteau (shared), Rocky Mountain Foothills (eastward), and Saskatchewan Plain. The Great Plains consist of

8249-482: The most well-known is notable Nebraskan author Willa Cather . In 1892, Cather became the literary editor of The Hesperian; in November 1893 she was named the managing editor. Cather would hold this position until she graduated from the university in 1895. In the mid-2000s, the daily paper converted to publishing tri-weekly, on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Later, it switched to a twice a week schedule. Beginning in

8362-442: The mountains, the local relief is generally small. The semi-arid climate excludes tree growth and opens far-reaching views. The plains are by no means a simple unit. They are of diverse structure and of various stages of erosional development. They are occasionally interrupted by buttes and escarpments . They are frequently broken by valleys. Yet on the whole, a broadly extended surface of moderate relief so often prevails that

8475-436: The name, Great Plains, for the region as a whole is well-deserved. The western boundary of the plains is usually well-defined by the abrupt ascent of the mountains. The eastern boundary of the plains (in the United States) is more climatic than topographic . The line of 20 in (510 mm) of annual rainfall trends a little east of northward near the 97th meridian. If a boundary must be drawn where nature presents only

8588-523: The nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community. Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia . Her father

8701-529: The opera singer Olive Fremstad ; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life. Cather's relationship with Lewis began in the early 1900s. They lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1908 until Cather's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village . They moved when

8814-621: The paper was published by the Palladian Literary Society and known as the Monthly Hesperian Student . The first editor of the Hesperian was W.L. Sweet and the paper contained only six sections. In 1885 the name was shortened to The Hesperian. At that time the University of Nebraska–Lincoln had multiple student publications; one of these, The Nebraskan , also known as The Rag after its editor,

8927-434: The plains and prairies. United States: Canada: the Great Plains biome is found to be at the brink of collapse due to woody plant encroachment , with 62% of Northern American grassland lost to date. The first Peoples ( Paleo-Indians ) arrived on the Great Plains thousands of years ago. The introduction of corn around 800 CE allowed the development of the mound-building Mississippian culture along rivers that crossed

9040-666: The problems of the present. And it was particularly in the context of the hardships of the Great Depression in which her work was seen as lacking social relevance. Similarly, critics—and Cather herself—were disappointed when her novel A Lost Lady was made into a film ; the film had little resemblance to the novel. Cather's lifelong conservative politics, appealing to critics such as Mencken, Randolph Bourne , and Carl Van Doren , soured her reputation with younger, often left-leaning critics like Hicks and Edmund Wilson . Despite this critical opposition to her work, Cather remained

9153-658: The public, in addition to transcription of her own published writing. Cather admired Henry James 's use of language and characterization. While Cather enjoyed the novels of several women—including George Eliot , the Brontës , and Jane Austen —she regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental. One contemporary exception was Sarah Orne Jewett , who became Cather's friend and mentor. Jewett advised Cather of several things: to use female narrators in her fiction (even though Cather preferred using male perspectives), to write about her " own country " ( O Pioneers!

9266-647: The region. Other species migrate from the south in the spring and spend their breeding season on the plains, including the white-faced ibis ( Plegadis chihi ), mountain plover ( Charadrius montanus ), marbled godwit ( Limosa fedoa ), Sprague's pipit ( Anthus spragueii ), Cassin's sparrow ( Peucaea cassinii ), Baird's sparrow ( Centronyx bairdii ), lark bunting ( Calamospiza melanocorys ), chestnut-collared longspur ( Calcarius ornatus ), thick-billed longspur or McCown's longspur ( Rhynchophanes mccownii ), and dickcissel ( Spiza americana ). The prairie rattlesnake ( Crotalus viridis ) ranges throughout much of

9379-474: The river from a better graded preglacial valley by the Pleistocene ice sheet . Here, the ice sheet overspread the plains from the moderately elevated Canadian highlands far on the north-east, instead of from the much higher mountains nearby on the west. The present altitude of the plains near the mountain base is 4,000 ft (1,200 m). The northern plains are interrupted by several small mountain areas. The Black Hills, chiefly in western South Dakota, are

9492-463: The same time, she made house calls with the local physician and decided to become a surgeon. For a short while, she signed her name as William, but this was quickly abandoned for Willa instead. In 1890, at the age of sixteen, Cather graduated from Red Cloud High School. She moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to enroll at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln . In her first year, her essay on Thomas Carlyle

9605-565: The seaway had once occupied. During the Cenozoic era , specifically about 25 million years ago during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, the continental climate became favorable to the evolution of grasslands. Existing forest biomes declined and grasslands became much more widespread. The grasslands provided a new niche for mammals, including many ungulates and glires , that switched from browsing diets to grazing diets. Traditionally,

9718-465: The south. Its altitude is 5,500 ft (1,700 m) at the highest western point, nearest the mountains whence its gravels were supplied. From there, it slopes southeastward at a decreasing rate, first about 12 ft (3.7 m), then about 7 ft/mi (1.3 m/km), to its eastern and southern borders, where it is 2,000 ft (610 m) in altitude. Like the High Plains farther north, it

9831-459: The southern section owes its smoothness to the deposition of imported gravels and sands upon a previously uneven surface by the action of aggrading rivers and their outgoing distributaries. The two sections are also alike in that residual eminences still here and there surmount the peneplain of the northern section, while the fluviatile plain of the central section completely buried the pre-existent relief. An exception to this statement must be made for

9944-416: The southwest, close to the mountains in southern Colorado, where some lava-capped mesas ( Mesa de Maya , Raton Mesa ) stand several thousand feet above the general plain level, and thus testify to the widespread erosion of this region before it was aggraded. The southern section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 35.5° and 25.5°, lies in western Texas , eastern New Mexico , and western Oklahoma . Like

10057-588: The spread of grasslands and the development of grazers have been strongly linked. However, an examination of mammalian teeth suggests that it is the open, gritty habitat and not the grass itself which is linked to diet changes in mammals, giving rise to the " grit, not grass " hypothesis. Paleontological finds in the area have yielded bones of mammoths , saber-toothed cats and other ancient animals, as well as dozens of other megafauna (large animals over 100 lb [45 kg]) – such as giant sloths , horses , mastodons , and American lion – that dominated

10170-602: The subdued forms of the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma , the westernmost member of the Ouachita system. The term "Western Plains" is used to describe the ecoregion of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains. In general, the Great Plains have a wide range of weather, with very cold and harsh winters and very hot and humid summers. Wind speeds are often very high, especially in winter. The 100th meridian roughly corresponds with

10283-471: The summer of 1940, Cather and Lewis went to Grand Manan for the last time, and Cather finished her final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl , a book much darker in tone and subject matter than her previous works. While Sapphira is understood by readers as lacking a moral sense and failing to evoke empathy, the novel was a great critical and commercial success, with an advance printing of 25,000 copies. It

10396-464: The surface of the plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred feet below the general level. A significant exception to the rule of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones about 50 mi (80 km) east of the mountains. This peculiar feature is explained as the result of displacement of

10509-590: The table-land, called the Edwards Plateau , is more dissected than the rest, and falls off to the south in a frayed-out fault scarp. This scarp overlooks the coastal plain of the Rio Grande embayment . The central denuded area, east of the Llano, resembles the east-central section of the plains in exposing older rocks. Between these two similar areas, in the space limited by the Canadian and Red Rivers, rise

10622-416: The town of Quebec, Willa Cather was not merely stirred and charmed—she was overwhelmed by the flood of memories, recognition, surmise it called up; by the sense of its extraordinary French character, isolated and kept intact through hundreds of years, as if by a miracle, on this great un-French continent." Cather finished her novel Shadows on the Rock , a historical novel set in 17th-century Quebec, in 1931; it

10735-642: The university's student newspaper, and became a writer for the Lincoln Courier . While at the university, she learned mathematics from and was befriended by John J. Pershing , who later became General of the Armies and, like Cather, earned a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. She changed her plans from studying science with the goal of becoming a physician, instead graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1895. Cather's time in Nebraska, still considered

10848-655: The western part of the Interior Plains , which include the mixed grass prairie , the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau , and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada . "Great Plains", or Western Plains , is also the ecoregion of the Great Plains or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains lie across both

10961-453: The writing "deft and skillful," Cather herself soon saw the novel as weak and shallow. Cather followed Alexander's Bridge with her three novels set in the Great Plains, which eventually became both popular and critical successes: O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), which are—taken together—sometimes referred to as her "Prairie Trilogy." It is this succession of plains-based novels for which Cather

11074-518: Was Charles Fectigue Cather. The Cather family originated in Wales, the name deriving from Cadair Idris , a Gwynedd mountain. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak, a former school teacher. By the time Cather turned twelve months old, the family had moved to Willow Shade , a Greek Revival -style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents. Mary Cather had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. Cather

11187-508: Was celebrated for her use of plainspoken language about ordinary people. Sinclair Lewis , for example, praised her work for making Nebraska available to the wider world for the first time. After writing The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that it was a failure in comparison to My Ántonia . As late as 1920, Cather became dissatisfied with the performance of her publisher, Houghton Mifflin , which devoted an advertising budget of only $ 300 to My Ántonia , and refused to pay for all

11300-511: Was closer to her brothers than to her sisters whom, according to biographer Hermione Lee , she "seems not to have liked very much." At the urging of Charles Cather's parents, the family moved to Nebraska in 1883 when Willa was nine years old. The farmland appealed to Charles' father, and the family wished to escape the tuberculosis outbreaks that were rampant in Virginia. Willa's father tried his hand at farming for eighteen months, then moved

11413-600: Was considerably more difficult; she also began a long recuperation from gallbladder surgery in 1942 that restricted travel. A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many drafts, personal papers, and letters, asking others to do the same. While many complied, some did not. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from the personal papers that remain. But in April 2013, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather —a collection of 566 letters Cather wrote to friends, family, and literary acquaintances such as Thornton Wilder and F. Scott Fitzgerald—was published, two years after

11526-539: Was dedicated to Jewett), and to write fiction that explicitly represented romantic attraction between women. Cather was also influenced by the work of Katherine Mansfield , praising in an essay Mansfield's ability "to throw a luminous streak out onto the shadowy realm of personal relationships." Cather's high regard for the immigrant families forging lives and enduring hardships on the Nebraska plains shaped much of her fiction. The Burlington Depot in Red Cloud brought in many strange and wonderful people to her small town. As

11639-536: Was displayed through room layout and furniture is evident in her novels like My Mortal Enemy . Though she hardly confined herself to writing exclusively about the Midwest, Cather is virtually inseparable from the Midwestern identity that she actively cultivated (even though she was not a "native" Midwesterner). While Cather is said to have significantly altered her literary approach in each of her novels, this stance

11752-468: Was founded in 1894 by Frank T. Riley. For seven years UNL would have two weekly newspapers until The Daily Nebraskan was organized on January 13, 1901 as a consolidation of The Hesperian and The Nebraskan. The evolved newspaper flourished beyond rival publications. While the editorship of the paper was first elected by the student body as an official publication, the paper is now financially supported through advertising and student fees. Of its leaders,

11865-834: Was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame . In 1973, the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp honoring her. In 1974, she was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners . In 1986, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame ’s Hall of Fame. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame . In 2000, she was named as one of the Virginia Women in History . In 2023,

11978-525: Was later included in Life magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. The French influence is found in many other Cather works, including Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and her final, unfinished novel set in Avignon , Hard Punishments . Although Cather began her writing career as a journalist, she made a distinction between journalism, which she saw as being primarily informative, and literature, which she saw as an art form. Cather's work

12091-538: Was likewise fascinated by the French-Canadian pioneers from Quebec who had settled in the Red Cloud area while she was a girl. During a brief stopover in Quebec with Edith Lewis in 1927, Cather was inspired to write a novel set in that French-Canadian city. Lewis recalled: "From the first moment that she looked down from the windows of the [Chateau] Frontenac [Hotel] on the pointed roofs and Norman outlines of

12204-483: Was nine years old. The family later settled in the town of Red Cloud . Shortly after graduating from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln , Cather moved to Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick . She spent

12317-577: Was not generally used before the early 20th century. Nevin Fenneman's 1916 study Physiographic Subdivision of the United States brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, in contrast to the lower Prairie Plains of the Midwestern states . Today the term " High Plains " is used for a subregion of the Great Plains. The term still remains little-used in Canada compared to

12430-624: Was offered an editorial position at McClure's Magazine in 1906, she moved to New York City. Cather spent most of 1907 living in Boston, while working at McClure's , writing a series of exposés about the religious leader Mary Baker Eddy , although freelance journalist Georgine Milmine was credited as the author. A 1993 letter discovered in the Christian Science church archives by Eddy biographer Gillian Gill disclosed that Cather had (perhaps reluctantly) written articles 2 through 14 of

12543-536: Was published in the Nebraska State Journal without her knowledge. After this, she published columns for $ 1 apiece, saying that seeing her words printed on the page had "a kind of hypnotic effect", pushing her to continue writing. After this experience, she became a regular contributor to the Journal . In addition to her work with the local paper, Cather served as the main editor of The Hesperian ,

12656-439: Was the subject of much criticism, particularly surrounding One of Ours . Her close friend, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant , saw the novel as a betrayal of the realities of war, not understanding how to "bridge the gap between [Cather's] idealized war vision ... and my own stark impressions of war as lived ." Similarly, Ernest Hemingway took issue with her portrayal of war, writing in a 1923 letter: "Wasn't [the novel's] last scene in

12769-589: Was then adopted by the Book of the Month Club , which bought more than 200,000 copies. Her final story, " The Best Years ", intended as a gift for her brother, was retrospective. It contained images or "keepsakes" from each of her twelve published novels and the short stories in Obscure Destinies . Although an inflamed tendon in her hand hampered her writing, Cather managed to finish a substantial part of

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