My Antonia: Introduction by Lucy Hughes-HallettOf Ántonia, the passionate and majestic central character in Willa Cather’s greatest novel, the narrator, Jim Burden, says that she left “images in the mind that did not fade–that grew stronger with time.” The same is true of the book in which Cather enshrines her heroine. In its magnificent tableaux of human beings caught in the toils of an abundant and overpowering natural world, and in the quiet, understated sympathy it displays for life of every sort, My Ántonia is a novel that effortlessly encompasses history and wilderness and the destiny of the individual–even as it lovingly and unsentimentally portrays a woman whose robust spirit and enduring warmth make her emblematic of what Cather most admired in the American people. |
Contents
PROLOGUE Sword of Honour | 7 |
BOOK ONE Apthorpe Gloriosus | 39 |
BOOK TWO Apthorpe Furibundus | 127 |
BOOK THREE Apthorpe Immolatus | 185 |
BOOK ONE Happy Warriors | 237 |
INTERLUDE | 335 |
BOOK TWO In the Picture | 343 |
EPILOGUE | 473 |
Synopsis of Preceding Volumes | 483 |
BOOK ONE State Sword | 495 |
BOOK TWO Fin de Ligne | 529 |
BOOK THREE The Death Wish | 625 |
EPILOGUE Festival of Britain | 707 |