O Pioneers!

Front Cover
Arc Manor, 2008 - Fiction - 152 pages
"O Pioneers ," by Willa Cather, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"""series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes & Noble Classics"
  • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. "Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works."The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman," writes Willa Cather in "O Pioneers "The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father s farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father s patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business.
A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life. Above all, it champions the belief that hard work is the surest road to personal fulfillment. Described upon publication in "The New York Times" as American in the best sense of the word, "O Pioneers "celebrates the men and women who struggled to build a nation that is both compelling and contradictory.
Chris Kraus is the author of "Aliens & Anorexia," "I Love Dick," and the forthcoming novel, "Torpor." She is co-editor of "Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotexte Reader," and edits Semiotexte Native Agents, a series of mostly female underground fiction."

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About the author (2008)

Willa Siebert Cather was born in 1873 in the home of her maternal grandmother in western Virginia. Although she had been named Willela, her family always called her "Willa." Upon graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a journalist and teacher while beginning her writing career. In 1906, Cather moved to New York to become a leading magazine editor at McClure's Magazine before turning to writing full-time. She continued her education, receiving her doctorate of letters from the University of Nebraska in 1917, and honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of California, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Cather wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and novels, winning awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, One of Ours, about a Nebraska farm boy during World War I. She also wrote The Professor's House, My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Lucy Gayheart. Some of Cather's novels were made into movies, the most well-known being A Lost Lady, starring Barbara Stanwyck. In 1961, Willa Cather was the first woman ever voted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma in 1974, and the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York in 1988. Cather died on April 24, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage, in her Madison Avenue, New York home, where she had lived for many years.

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