In the late nineteenth century, a fourteen-year-old immigrant girl from Bohemia and a ten-year-old orphan boy arrive in Black Hawk, Nebraska, and in teaching each other form a friendship that will last a lifetime.
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| The Life and Works of Willa Sibert Cather | |
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| Time Line of Cather's Life and Works | |
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| The Historical Context of My Antonia | |
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| Characters in My Antonia | |
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| Echoes | |
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| Images of My Antonia | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The Shimerdas | |
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| Respond to the Selection, Book I | |
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| The Hired Girls | |
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| Respond to the Selection, Book II | |
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| Lena Lingard | |
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| The Pioneer Woman's Story | |
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| Respond to the Selection, Books III-IV | |
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| Cuzak's Boys | |
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| Respond to the Selection, Book V | |
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| Plot Analysis of My Antonia | |
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| Related Readings | |
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| Introduction to the 1926 Edition | |
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| Letter to Frances Samlund | |
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| from History of the State of Nebraska | |
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| "The Fir Tree" | |
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| "Riding into California" | |
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| "Mint Snowball" | |
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| "The Prairie Grass Dividing" | |
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| Creative Writing Activities | |
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| Critical Writing Activities | |
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| Projects | |
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| Glossary | |
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| Handbook of Literary Terms | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
Willa Siebert Cather was born in 1873 in the home of her maternal grandmother in western Virginia. Although she had been named Willela, her family always called her "Willa." Upon graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a journalist and teacher while beginning her writing career. In 1906, Cather moved to New York to become a leading magazine editor at McClure's Magazine before turning to writing full-time. She continued her education, receiving her doctorate of letters from the University of Nebraska in 1917, and honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of California, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Cather wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and novels, winning awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, One of Ours, about a Nebraska farm boy during World War I. She also wrote The Professor's House, My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Lucy Gayheart. Some of Cather's novels were made into movies, the most well-known being A Lost Lady, starring Barbara Stanwyck. In 1961, Willa Cather was the first woman ever voted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma in 1974, and the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York in 1988. Cather died on April 24, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage, in her Madison Avenue, New York home, where she had lived for many years.
