The Professor’s House ranks among Willa Cather’s most lyrical, accomplished, and evocative novels. Set in a Midwestern university town in the 1920s, the story centers around Professor Godfrey St. Peter, a distinguished, middle-aged scholar of the Classics who experiences a sense of disillusionment with his life and work. The novel unfolds in three parts, seamlessly weaving together St. Peter’s present-day reflections with a poignant flashback to the adventures of his former student, Tom Outland. Through Tom’s story, set against the rugged landscapes of the American Southwest, Cather explores themes of youth, idealism, and the inevitable confrontation with the harsh realities of life.
Through the lives of richly drawn characters, the story offers a beautiful portrayal of nostalgia, regret, the search for meaning, the passage of time, and the clash between tradition and modernity. It remains a significant work in Willa Cather’s body of literature, celebrated for its exquisite prose and insightful depiction of a vivid cast of characters grappling with the complexities of their own existence. This Warbler Classics edition includes a detailed biographical timeline.
Tabella dei contenuti
Contents
Book One. The Family
Book Two. Tom Outland’s Story
Book Three. The Professor
Biographical Timeline
Circa l’autore
Willa Cather (1873-1947) was an American writer best known for her novels of the Plains and for One of Ours, a novel set in World War I, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943 and received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944. By the time of her death in 1947 she had written twelve novels, five books of short stories, and a collection of poetry.