The Song of the Lark (Signet Classics) - Softcover

Cather, Willa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451525337 ISBN 13: 9780451525338

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1991

Synopsis

A republication of the author's most autobiographical novel tells the story of a young woman who is determined to fashion her own destiny, despite the social restrictions of her period. Reissue.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"The time will come when she will be ranked above Hemingway." --Leon Edel

In this powerful portrait of the self-making of an artist, Willa Cather created one of her most extraordinary heroines. Thea Kronborg, a minister's daughter in a provincial Colorado town, seems destined from childhood for a place in the wider world. But as her path to the world stage leads her ever farther from the humble town she can't forget and from the man she can't afford to love, Thea learns that her exceptional musical talent and fierce ambition are not enough.
It is in the solitude of a tiny rock chamber high in the side of an Arizona cliff--"a cleft in the heart of the world"--that Thea comes face to face with her own dreams and desires, stripped clean by the haunting purity of the ruined cliff dwellings and inspired by the whisperings of their ancient dust. Here she finds the courage to seize her future and to use her gifts to catch "the shining, elusive element that is life itself--life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose." In prose as shimmering and piercingly true as the light in a desert canyon, Cather takes us into the heart of a woman coming to know her deepest self.

About the Author:

Born in Virginia in 1873 and raised on a Nebraska ranch, Willa Cather is known for her beautifully evocative short stories and novels about the American West. Cather became the managing editor for McClure’s Magazine in 1906 and lived for forty years in New York City with her companion Edith Lewis. In 1922 Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, the story of a Western boy in World War I. In 1933 she was awarded the Prix Femina Americaine “for distinguished literary accomplishments.” She died in 1947.

Photo: AKG London

About this edition

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0451525337
• ISBN 13: 9780451525338
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 480