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Willa Cather Know-it All FlashCards Set One

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Willa Cather was born in Back Creek, Virginia on December 7th, 1873
http://www.americanwriters.org/classroom/resources/tr_cather.asp
When she was 9 the family moved to Red Cloud, NE
http://www.americanwriters.org/classroom/resources/tr_cather.asp
She attended the University of Nebraska, where she often dressed as William Cather, her opposite sex "twin"
http://www.americanwriters.org/classroom/resources/tr_cather.asp
She worked on the editorial staff at McClure's Magazine in NYC for six years
http://www.americanwriters.org/classroom/resources/tr_cather.asp
Cather won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours
http://www.americanwriters.org/classroom/resources/tr_cather.asp
Having achieved notable popularity at
the peak of her career in the 1920s, she was viewed by many in
the 1930s as an old-fashioned writer who ignored the pressing
social issues of her time and relapsed into a more congenial
past.
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1P1:28406551&num=32&ctrlInfo=Round9c%3AProd2%3ASR%3AResult&ao=
After graduating in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh, the setting of Paul's Case.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
In Pittsburgh, Cather worked as a journalist, a high school teacher for a year and, in 1905, published a collection of short stories called"The Troll Garden."
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
Paul's Case was based on a real Pittsburgh high school student's suicide
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
Afterwards she moved to New York to work as an editor, and later as managing editor for "McClure's" magazine.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
It was in New York that she met Sarah Orne Jewett, who told her to remove herself from journalism and "to find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world."
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
"It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear, but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or drama, as well to the
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
After moving to Pittsburgh Cather met and fell in love with a 16 year old girl, Cather was in her twenties.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
The girl, Isabelle McClung, later married a man, but Cather and McClung kept in touch over the next 40 years. According to Quistory, Cather's heart belonged to McClung for the rest of her life, even though Cather's closest relationship was with her lifet
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html
1874: Willow Shade
Cather and her parents join her paternal grandparents, William and Caroline, at their farmhouse, Willow Shade, between Back Creek Valley and Winchester, Virginia. The elder Cathers relocate to Nebraska in 1877.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1883: Nebraska
In April Cather's family joins her paternal grandparents on their farm in Nebraska, on a broad plateau between the Little Blue and Republican rivers known as "The Divide." The move helps to shape Cather's perspective on the
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
884: Red Cloud
The Cathers relocate to a small town in the midst of rough prairie. Here Cather meets Annie Sadilek, on whom she models Ántonia in My Ántonia.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1890: High School Graduation
As valedictorian of Red Cloud High School, Cather gives the commencement address "Superstition vs. Investigation," on the importance of scientific investigation throughout history.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1891: University of Nebraska
In the fall, Cather begins classes at the university and serves as literary editor of the student newspaper, The Hesperian.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1895: College Graduation
When Cather graduates from the University of Nebraska, she becomes one of the few women at that time to achieve a college education.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
Opera
A trip to Chicago to see the Metropolitan Opera Company on tour marks the beginning of Cather's lifelong passion for opera and the divas who dominate it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1899: Isabelle McClung
While living in Pittsburgh, Cather befriends Isabelle McClung, the rebellious daughter of a wealthy, conservative judge and member of the city's social elite. Isabelle becomes Cather's reader and muse. From 1901 to 1906, Cathe
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1902: Europe
Accompanied by Isabelle McClung, Cather spends the summer in England and France, making pilgrimages to the birthplaces and graves of artists she admires.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1906: New York City
Cather arrives in New York in the summer to work at McClure's.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1908: Edith Lewis
Cather first met Edith Lewis, a fellow Nebraskan, on a visit home in 1903. Employed in publishing and advertising herself, Lewis becomes copyeditor, proofreader, and editor of Cather's work. The two will live together in New York u
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1912: Winslow, Arizona
On a visit to brother Douglass in the Southwest, Cather "discovers herself," finding renewed creative energy. Thea Kronborg experiences a similar awakening on a visit to Arizona in The Song of the Lark.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1916: Isabelle McClung marries
Cather's confidante marries violinist Jan Hambourg and eventually moves to France. Through letters she and Cather remain close, but their period of collaboration ends.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1920: Europe with Edith Lewis
Cather tours the battlefields and countryside of Europe with Edith Lewis, stopping to visit her cousin G.P. Cather's grave.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1921: Episcopalianism
Cather and her parents join the Episcopal Church, in which she will be an active member for the rest of her life.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1928: Cather's father dies
In March, Cather's father dies of a heart attack. Her brother Douglass takes their mother to Southern California, where she suffers a stroke.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1931: Cather's mother dies
While Cather is at her cottage on Grand Manan Island, off the coast of Maine, her mother succumbs to complications from her stroke. Cather had regularly visited her mother at the California sanatorium where she lay helples
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1935: Isabelle ill
In March, Isabelle McClung Hambourg returns to the United States to consult American doctors for a kidney disease that proves incurable. Cather spends the year attending to her.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1938: Douglass dies
Devastated by her brother's death from a heart attack, Cather does not attend the funeral.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
Isabelle McClung Hambourg dies
Cather's friend and muse succumbs to kidney disease in Sorento, Italy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1945: Roscoe dies
Cather and her brother had always kept in close contact, and his death severs her last close link to the past.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1947: Death
On April 24, at the age of 73, Cather dies of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, on a hillside spot that she had selected. With Alfred A. Knopf, Edith Lewis acts as her literary executor.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1891: Cather in print
Submitted by her teacher without her knowledge, Cather's essay on English essayist Thomas Carlyle appears in the Nebraska State Journal.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1892: First short story
Cather publishes her short story "Peter" in The Mahogany Tree; it later becomes part of My Ántonia.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1893: Nebraska State Journal
Cather becomes a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal newspaper, reviewing plays and writing the Sunday arts column "The Passing Show."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1896: The Home Monthly
In June, Cather moves to Pittsburgh to edit the Home Monthly, using a half dozen pen names. A review on November 24 is finally signed "Willa."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1897: The Pittsburgh Leader
In July the Home Monthly is sold, and Cather returns to Red Cloud. By September, she is back in Pittsburgh, writing play and book reviews at the Pittsburgh Leader.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1900: Washington, D.C.
In the late spring, Cather resigns from the Pittsburgh Leader. Cather lives in Washington for a few months and works as a translator and a correspondent for Pittsburgh and Lincoln papers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
Teaching
In March, Cather accepts a position at Pittsburgh's Central High School, hoping that a teacher's schedule will allow her more time to write. She often refers to Pittsburgh as the birthplace of her writing career.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1903: April Twilights
Although Cather considered fiction a more elevated genre than poetry, her first book is this collection of 27 poems, whose publication she financed herself.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1905: The Troll Garden
S.S. McClure, publisher of McClure's magazine, solicits and publishes Cather's first short story collection, which deals with the relationship between gender and art.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1906: McClure's magazine
S.S. McClure travels to Pittsburgh to offer Cather a job at his magazine, where she will work until 1911. She spends much of her first year with the magazine in Boston working on a profile of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Chri
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1908: Sarah Orne Jewett
Jewett, a native of Maine and celebrated practitioner of "local color" writing, becomes Cather's friend and mentor, influencing her writing about her native Nebraska.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1912: Cather resigns
While on a leave of absence from McClure's, Cather officially resigns to pursue writing full time.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
Alexander's Bridge
Serialized in McClure's under the title Alexander's Masquerade, Cather's first novel is then published in book form. The work is heavily influenced by Henry James.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1913: O Pioneers!
Cather displays the feminism and realism that become integral to her work in O Pioneers!, the story of an immigrant woman's struggle to save her Nebraska farm. She dedicates the novel to Sarah Orne Jewett.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
My Autobiography by S.S. McClure
Cather's ghostwritten account of her former boss's life story is serialized in McClure's.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html
1914: Olive Fremstad
Interviewing Olive Fremstad for McClure's, Cather is impressed by the opera star's confidence and artistry, and the two become friends. Fremstad is the inspiration for Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/lark/timeline_text.html

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