The Song of the Lark Willa Cather – The Song of the Lark is a 1915 novel by Willa Cather. It is the second part of a thematic trilogy by Cather which tells stories of women in the emerging prairies of the American West. The trilogy is considered to be some of Cathers finest work, celebrated for bringing to life the rural West and its people in a way that had never been done before.The book follows the life of Thea Kronborg as she grows up in a small American prairie town and follows her ambition to be an internationally renowned singer. Theas story is a combination of Cathers own autobiographical experiences growing up in Nebraska and the life of a famous Scandinavian-American opera singer named Olive Fremstad.The novel is divided into six parts. The first one recounts Theas childhood in the fictional town of Moonstone, Colorado. When the book starts, she is eleven years old. She is the daughter of the local minister and has a reputation for being different and aloof. Though the adults in her family, particularly her mother and eccentric Aunt Tillie, are supportive of her, she has trouble getting along with her siblings and other children. She takes daily piano lessons for two to four hours a day.Her friends are all older men in the town: her piano teacher Herr Wunsch, a drunk out-of-towner who stays with the local tailor Mr. Kohler and his wife; the local physician Dr. Archie, who once saved her life when she had pneumonia as a child; Spanish Johnny, a Mexican wandering musician who lives in the Mexican Town outside of Moonstone; and Ray Kennedy, a train conductor who dotes on Thea and is waiting for her to grow older so he can marry her.One day, Thea plays piano at a concert in her local church and gets upset when her rival is praised above her. She continues to train with Wunsch, who first introduces her to opera. When Wunsch causes a scandal by getting drunk and wrecking Kohlers home, his students no longer want to be associated with him and he leaves town. At the young age of fifteen, Thea takes on Wunschs piano students as a full-time teacher, dropping out of school.
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Wilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English.After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, ‘One of Ours’ (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author’s total accomplishments.
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