Biography
1875	Wilella Cather was born on 7 December 1873 in Back Creek Valley (a small farming community close to the Blue Ridge Mountains) in Virginia. She was the eldest child of Charles Cather (deputy Sheriff) and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The first Cathers originally came from Ireland to Pennsylvania in the 1750's.
1883	The Cather family join Willa’s grandparents William and Caroline and her uncle George in Webster County, Nebraska. The party includes Willa’s two brothers, a sister Jessica plus her grandmother Rachel Boak (who lives with them).
1884	They move to Red Cloud, a railroad town nearby, where Charles opens a loan and insurance office. They never get very rich or influential, in Willa’s opinion because he places intellectual and spiritual matters over the commercial. Her mother is a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a lady". Here Willa meets the girl Annie Sadilek whom she later uses for the Antonia character in My Antonia.
1890	Willa graduates from Red Cloud High School. Afterwards she moves to Lincoln in order to study for the entrance at the University of Nebraska.
1892	Publishes her short story "Peter" in a Boston magazine. It later becomes part of My Antonia.
1895	Graduates and returns home to her family in Red Cloud.
1896	Publishes On the Divide. She moves to Pittsburgh in order to edit the "Home Monthly" and also to make reviews for the "Pittsburgh Leader".
1901	Teaches English and Latin in Pittsburgh high schools.
1902	Visit to Europe.
1903	April Twilights (poems) published.
1905	Short story collection The Troll Garden.
1906	Moves to New York to work for McClure’s Magazine, which she later becomes the managing editor of.
1908	Meets Sarah Orne Jewett, local colorist from Maine, who later inspired Willa to write about Nebraska.
1911	Writes The Bohemian Girl and begins to write Alexandra, which later becomes part of O Pioneers!
1912	Alexander’s Bridge published. For the first time Cather visits the Southwest, where she "discovers herself". There she gets very fascinated by the Anasazi cliff dwellings (later to be used in a novel). The place made her think of Nebraska and its mixture of native and immigrant cultures. On her way home she visits her old Bohemian friends in Nebraska.
1913	Publishes O Pioneers!
1915	Visits Mesa Verde in Colorado. Publishes The Song of the Lark.
1915	Cather visits the Southwest, Wyoming and Nebraska and meets her old friend Annie Sadilek Pavelka again.
1917	Writes My Antonia in New Hampshire and publishes the book the following year.
1920	Short story collection Youth and the Bright Medusa.
1923	Awarded the Pulitzer prize for One of Ours published the year before. A Lost Lady published.
1925	The Professor’s House.
1926	My Mortal Enemy.
1927	Death comes for the Archbishop.
1930	Awarded the Howells medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for Death comes for the Archbishop.
1931	Shadows on the Rock.
1932	Collection of 3 short stories: Obscure Destinies, whereof the story "Neighbour Rosicky" is based on the Pavelka family.
1933	Awarded Prix Femina Americain for Shadows on the Rock.
1935	Lucy Gayheart.
1936	Essay collection Not under Forty.
1938	Sapphira and the slave Girl.
1945	The Best Years.
1947	Willa Cather dies 24 April and was buried in New Hampshire.

At university I wrote a report about Willa Cather, her prairie novels and the conditions of pioneer women at the time. From that report, I have chosen a few things to show you here. Unfortunately, I do not have time to answer students about individual questions. I also do not have additional copies of my report.

Here are a few other Cather sites: Cather page from Harvard University  Willa Cather Foundation  Online books at www.books.com Women writers net Paul's Case Cather - Perspectives in American Literature