Cather Studies, Volume 7

Not only are Cather’s own life and work subject to enshrinement, but as a writer, she herself often returned to the motifs of canonization and to the complex relationship between the onlooker and the idealized object. Through textual study of her published novels and her behind-the-scenes campaign and publicity writing in service of her novels, the reader comes to understand the extent to which, despite her legendary claims and commitment to privacy, Willa Cather helped to orchestrate her own iconic status.

 

Guy J. Reynolds is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The former General Editor of both the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition and Cather Studies, he is also the author and editor of several books including Willa Cather in Context: Progress, Race, Empire (St. Martin's, 1996) and Apostles of Modernity: American Writers in the Age of Development (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), and Sensing Willa Cather: The Writer and the Body in Transition (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).