Willa Cather

O Pioneers! (Annotated) Willa Cather

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 - April 24, 1947) was an American writer who achieved recognition for her frontier novels of life on the Great Plains, including Oh Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915) and My Antonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during the First World War. Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At 33, she moved to New York City, her main home for the rest of her life, although she also traveled extensively and spent considerable time at her summer residence in Grand. Cather was born Wilella Sibert Cather in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather (died 1928), whose family had lived ashore in the valley for six generations. Cather's family originated in Wales, the surname derived from Cadair Idris, a mountain in Gwynedd. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak (died 1931), a former school teacher. A year after Cather's birth, the family moved to Willow Shade, a 130-acre Greek Revival-style house given to them by their paternal grandparents.