My Antonia, Willa Cather : Text 10- BookIV Chapter IV
First of all I’m going to introduce the life and work of the author of My Antonia, Willa Cather.
She was born in 1873 in rural Virginia. She moved with her family from Virginia to Red Cloud, Nebraska at the age of 10. Red Cloud was at that time a small railroad down that had been founded 13 years before and which was populated by immigrants from all over Europe.
Willa attended RC. High School and learned the classics. She began to forge friendship with immigrants. She moved to Lincoln in 1890 where she studied to enter College. At the university of Nebraska she would be remembered as masculine appearance and change her first name into Willy.
After the graduation, she decided to pursue a career in journalism, then she became a teacher of English and Latin. She started publishing mainly magazine articles and short novels.
In 1916, Willa’s closest friend and love of her life, Isabelle McClung, got married. She suffered terribly from the separation and that year she returned to Red Cloud. When she went back to New York she started writing My Antonia and published it in 1918. In 1926 My Antonia was republished with a new introduction. She continued to write and publish until her death in 1947. She was buried in New Hampshire where a foundation has been set up to honor her memory.
The novel My Antonia takes the form of a memoir written by the narrator Jim Burden? He recounts the life of his childhood friend Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter of an immigrant family of Bohemians farmers living in Black Hawk Nebraska. The novel is divided into an introduction and 5 separate books. These 5 stages correspond to different parts of the life of the narrator, form childhood to adulthood. Book I starts in 1880 and the novel covers a 30 year period.
So nox I’m going to read the extract of the Book IV, Chapter IV, from “the next afternoon” to “could end there”.
The next day, Jim goes to see Antonia at the Shimerda’s