Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

Zachary Perdieu (University of Georgia)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1923

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Following the popular

Great Plains Trilogy

and published shortly after her Pulitzer winning book

One of Ours

(1922), Willa Cather’s short novel

A Lost Lady

(1923) arrived at what was perhaps the peak of her prolific career. In what is one of the most distilled representations of a central theme in Cather’s work,

A Lost Lady

places a small Great Plains community at the center of America’s conquest and reshaping of the western frontier. Like many of Cather’s novels, this tumultuous historical period is framed by the experience of a primary female figure, the titular ‘lost lady’. Though it has not received nearly the critical attention or canonization of works like

O Pioneers!

(1913) or

My Ántonia

(1918),

A Lost Lady

remains representative of Cather’s broader thematic and…

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3003 words

Citation: Perdieu, Zachary. "A Lost Lady". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 March 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7090, accessed 16 May 2024.]

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Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

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