Willa Cather wrote about the places she knew, including Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia. Often forgotten among these essential locations has been Pittsburgh. During the ten years Pittsburgh was her home (1896–1906), Cather worked as an editor, journalist, teacher, and freelance writer. She mixed with all sorts of people and formed friendships both ephemeral and lasting. She published extensively—and not just profiles and reviews but also a collection of poetry, April Twilights, and more than thirty short stories, including several collected in The Troll Garden that are now considered masterpieces: “A Death in the Desert,” “The Sculptor’s Funeral,” “A Wagner Matinee,” and “Paul’s Case.” During extended working vacations through 1916, she finished four novels in Pittsburgh.
Cather Studies, Volume 13 explores the myriad ways that these crucial years in Pittsburgh shaped Cather’s writing career and the artistic, professional, and personal connections she made there. With contributions from fourteen well-known Cather scholars, this collection of essays recognizes the importance Pittsburgh played in Cather’s life and work and deepens our appreciation of how her art examines and elucidates the human experience.
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Timothy W. Bintrim, James A. Jaap, and Kimberly Vanderlaan
Prologue: Becoming “Miss Cather from Pittsburgh”
Ann Romines
Part 1. East Meets West
1. Bicycles and Freedom in Red Cloud and Pittsburgh: Willa Cather’s Early Transformations of Place and Gender in “Tommy, the Unsentimental”
Daryl W. Palmer
2. Where Pagodas Rise on Every Hill: Romance as Resistance in “A Son of the Celestial”
Michael Gorman
3. The Boxer Rebellion, Pittsburgh’s Missionary Crisis, and “The Conversion of Sum Loo”
Timothy W. Bintrim
Part 2. Class Action: Retrying “Paul’s Case”
4. Growing Pains: The City behind Cather’s Pittsburgh Classroom
Mary Ruth Ryder
5. Big Steel and Class Consciousness in “Paul’s Case”
Charmion Gustke
6. “The Most Exciting Attractions Are between Two Opposites That Never Meet”: Willa Cather and Andy Warhol
Todd Richardson
Part 3. Friendships, Literary and Musical
7. Willa Cather as Translator: The Pittsburgh “French Soirées”
Diane Prenatt
8. A Collegial Friendship: Willa Cather and Ethel Herr Litchfield
John H. Flannigan
9. Grave and God-Free: Ethelbert Nevin as a Pivotal Historical Source in “The Professor’s Commencement” and The Professor’s House
Kimberly Vanderlaan
Part 4. Later Stories
10. “I’m Working, I’m Working”: The Industrious Artist of Pittsburgh in Willa Cather’s The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Publications
Kelsey Squire
11. Venetian Window: Pittsburgh Glass and Modernist Community in “Double Birthday”
Joseph C. Murphy
12. Cather’s Pittsburgh and the Alchemy of Social Class
Angela Conrad
Epilogue: Why Willa Cather? A Retrospective
John J. Murphy
Contributors
Index
