Literary Research and the American Realism and Naturalism Period: Strategies and Sources will help those interested in researching this era. Authors Linda L. Stein and Peter J. Lehu emphasize research methodology and outline the best practices for the research process, paying attention to the unique challenges inherent in conducting studies of national literature.

The wide-ranging essays collected in this volume of Cather Studies examine Willa Cather?s unique artistic relationship to the environment. Under the theoretical rubric of ecocriticism, these essays focus on Cather?s close observations of the natural world and how the environment proves, for most of these contributors, to be more than simply a setting for her characters. While it is certain that Cather?s novels and short stories are deeply grounded in place, literary critics are only now considering how place functions within her narratives and addressing environmental issues through her writing. ø These essays reintroduce us to a Cather who is profoundly identified with the places that shaped her and that she wrote about: Glen A. Love offers an interdisciplinary reading of The Professor?s House that is scientifically oriented; Joseph Urgo argues that My ?ntonia models a preservationist aesthetic in which landscape and memory are inextricably entangled; Thomas J. Lyon posits that Cather had a living sense of the biotic community and used nature as the standard of excellence for human endeavors; and Jan Goggans considers the ways that My ?ntonia shifts from nativism toward a ?flexible notion of place-based community.?

Anna Pavlova's revolutionary debut in 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera House captivated the nation and introduced Americans to the charms of modern ballet. Willa Cather was among the first intellectuals to recognize that dance had suddenly been elevated into a new art form, and she quickly trained herself to become one of the leading balletomanes of her era. Willa Cather and the Dance: "A Most Satisfying Elegance" traces the writer's dance education, starting with the ten-page explication she wrote in 1913 for McClure's magazine called "Training for the Ballet." Cather's interest was sustained through her entire canon as she utilized characters, scenes, and images from almost all of the important dance productions that played in New York.

Willa Cather s My Antonia, a nostalgic novel about an earlier America, portrays the harmonies and disharmonies of the human world and the world of nature. This new edition gathers together some of the best criticism available on the text.

Willa Cather and the Nineteenth Century explores, with textual specificity and historical alertness, the question of how the cultures of the nineteenth century--the cultures that shaped Willa Cather's childhood, animated her education, supplied her artistic models, generated her inordinate ambitions, and gave embodiment to many of her deeply held values--are addressed in her fiction. In two related sets of essays, seven contributors track within Cather's life or writing the particular cultural formations, emotions, and conflicts of value she absorbed from the atmosphere of her distinct historical moment; their ten colleagues offer a compelling set of case studies that articulate the manifold ways that Cather learned from, built upon, or resisted models provided by particular nineteenth-century writers, works, or artistic genres. Taken together with its Cather Studies predecessor, Willa Cather and Modern Cultures, this volume reveals Cather as explorer and interpreter, sufferer and master of the transition from a Victorian to a Modernist America.

Willa Cather wrote about the places she knew, including Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia. Often forgotten among these essential locations has been Pittsburgh. During the ten years Pittsburgh was her home (1896-1906), Cather worked as an editor, journalist, teacher, and freelance writer. She mixed with all sorts of people and formed friendships both ephemeral and lasting. She published extensively--and not just profiles and reviews but also a collection of poetry, April Twilights, and more than thirty short stories, including several collected in The Troll Garden that are now considered masterpieces: "A Death in the Desert," "The Sculptor's Funeral," "A Wagner Matinee," and "Paul's Case." During extended working vacations through 1916, she finished four novels in Pittsburgh. Cather Studies, Volume 13 explores the myriad ways that these crucial years in Pittsburgh shaped Cather's writing career and the artistic, professional, and personal connections she made there. With contributions from fourteen well-known Cather scholars, this collection of essays recognizes the importance Pittsburgh played in Cather's life and work and deepens our appreciation of how her art examines and elucidates the human experience.

The jacket of the first edition of Obscure Destinies announced ?Three New Stories of the West,? heralding Willa Cather?s return to what many thought of as ?her? territory?the Great Plains. These three stories, ?Neighbour Rosicky,? ?Old Mrs. Harris,? and ?Two Friends,? reflected her return to the well of memory that had inspired the books that made her reputation. The WillaøCather Scholarly Edition presents for the first time the three stories in their historical and biographical context, with an interpretive historical essay and detailed explanatory notes. The textual essay and apparatus establish the definitive text and trace Cather?s changes through newly discovered prepublication versions.