Willa Cather: Double Lives - Softcover

"Cather could not have hoped for a more passionately sensible and insightful interpreter." --The Observer

"The biographer's enthusiasm for her subject illuminates every page." --Hilary Mantel

"A valuable critical study. . . . So absorbing that it provokes a rereading of [all of Cather's] work." --The New York Times Book Review

"Sympathetic and illuminating. . . . Lee's reading of Cather rediscovers her as a disconcerting, complex writer of conflicting energies and sexual doubleness." --New Statesman

Hermione Lee’s provocative and influential biography provides a sensitive reappraisal of a marvelous and often underrated writer. The Willa Cather she reveals here was a Nebraskan who spent much of her life in self-imposed exile from the prairies she celebrated in O Pioneers! and My Antonia, a woman whose life was riddled with the tension between masculine and feminine, and a writer whose naturalness of style disguised exquisite artistry. By exposing the contradictions that lie at the heart of much of Cather’s life and work, Lee locates new layers of meaning and places her firmly at the forefront of the modern literary tradition that was taking shape in her time.