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My Antonia by Willa Cather
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My Antonia (original 1918; edition 1926)

by Willa Cather

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13,550284437 (3.92)988
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

My Ántonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works. It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that… (more)

Member:jhowell
Title:My Antonia
Authors:Willa Cather
Info:Boston; and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company; Cambridge: The Riverside Press, c1926.
Collections:Your library
Rating:***
Tags:literary fiction, classic

Work Information

My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)

1910s (25)
Elevenses (265)
AP Lit (246)
100 (38)
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English (273)  German (3)  Spanish (2)  Italian (2)  French (1)  Piratical (1)  All languages (282)
Showing 1-5 of 273 (next | show all)
Unfortunately, I had a lot of several-day breaks in re-reading this book, which I had first read nearly half a century ago. Knowing so much more about cultural history now increased my enjoyment of this work significantly, but also knowing more about gender bias rendered Jim Burden a far less credible narrator than I thought he was in my early adolescence. Nevertheless, this novel tells a tale about loss and change at a time in which developments in communications and transportation changed the pace of life at dizzying speeds. Willa Cather beautifully knitted together the sense of loss — former homelands, pioneering agrarian life, childhood past — with ongoing life. ( )
  bschweiger | Feb 4, 2024 |
This was such a gorgeous book. I was sorry to get to the end. Cather evokes the time and place so wonderfully. I will seek out more of her work. ( )
  mlevel | Jan 22, 2024 |
The word for this novel is "exquisite". There isn't a lot of story, but there is deft characterization, and beautiful descriptive language that turns the commonplace into the iconic. Page after page I marveled at Cather's ability to show the beauty of landscape, the vitality of young children at play, the difficulties of early 20th century life on the prairies of North America...all in terms that sound both original and inevitable. And by the time I reached the last chapters, the adult Antonia was speaking in my Slovak grandmother's voice. I said somewhere else that this book feels like Little House on the Prairie for adults. That's a bit glib, perhaps, but true still. And I hate to leave this world of hers, hard as it sometimes is to live in it. "Brilliant" is another word for it. All five stars.
January 2014 ( )
  laytonwoman3rd | Dec 27, 2023 |
My copy of [My Antonia] is a warped paperback “Enriched Classic” picked up at the neighborhood used bookstore. In some of the later chapters words are underlined, sometimes with what I assume are annotations in Korean characters; the book was once read by a Korean immigrant reading a novel about an immigrant from what was then called Bohemia (Czech Republic?). A scan of Goodreads reviews indicated that a number of people were introduced to the book in high school & hated Willa Cather’s books ever since. I wonder what the original owner thought about the novel? (It ended up in a used bookstore, after all) As most Americans are, I’m a descendant of immigrants & the book touched my heart. Reading it over Christmas at age 74, I was sorry I waited so long to read it – Cather was probably considered to be too alien for youthful readers in my progressive Honolulu school. Been trying to catch up on authors I never got around to, Cather being one; got to this only after [O Pioneers] & [Death Comes for the Archbishop]; not surprised that this one was good too. At first it seems a collection of vivid character & scene sketches, but some homespun Proust in there, too – though the unexpected changes of fortune reminded me of Larry McMurtry. Reading about the characters – they seemed so real, there were times I was disappointed that the narrator didn’t always tell what happened to them: Antonia’s little sister, Jim’s grandmother & grandfather. They’re like the hired hands that go off to the West never to be heard from again, after the grandparents sell the farm & move to town. The stories of the hired girls don’t disappoint, though. And it seems lifelike that we only get the life histories of people closest to our hearts only in fragments of filtered stories. ( )
  featherbear | Dec 26, 2023 |
"As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."


This book is about the pioneer experience in Nebraska, particularly that of Eastern European immigrants, and is also the coming of age story of Jim Burden (narrator), and Ántonia. While the book is told from Jim's point of view, I felt more connected to Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia are friends from the moment they meet, and as the seasons and the landscape of Nebraska prairie change, so do Jim and Ántonia. They eventually take very different paths, but their friendship remains. Jim is a romantic, and very nostalgic about the past. Ántonia is the symbol of the past for him. I was wrapped up in his feelings of nostalgia, and longing for the past. As I was reading, I felt them too. I particularly loved his descriptions of the Nebraska prairie.


CAWPILE Rating:

C- 9

A- 10

W- 10

P- 6

I- 9

L- 10

E- 10

Avg= 9.1= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#backtotheclassics (Classic from the Americas- includes the Caribbean)
#mmdchallenge (a book published before you were born) ( )
  DominiqueMarie | Oct 22, 2023 |
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» Add other authors (33 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Willa Catherprimary authorall editionscalculated
Benda, W. T.Illustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Byatt, A.S.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Colacci, DavidNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Homer, WinslowCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Murphy, John J.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Norris, KathleenForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sharistanian, JanetEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Svoboda, TereseAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tapper, GordonIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Optima dies . . . prima fugit
-Virgil
Dedication
To Carrie and Irene Miner in memory of affections old and true.
First words
I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the “hands” on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake’s experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.
"When a writer begins to work with his own material," said Willa Cather, in a retrospective preface to her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, "he has less and less choice about the moulding of it. (Preface)
Quotations
He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never forget, "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Ántonia!"
Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use.
Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn't play any more.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (3)

Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

My Ántonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works. It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that

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Book description
My Ántonia chronicles the life of Ántonia, a Bohemian immigrant woman, as seen through the eyes of Jim, the man unable to forget her. Jim, now a successful New York lawyer, recollects his upbringing on a Nebraska farm. Even after 20 years, Ántonia continues to live a romantic life in his imagination. When he returns to Nebraska, he finds Ántonia has lived a battered life. Although the man to whom she dedicated her life abandons her, she remains strong and full of courage.
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Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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Tantor Media

2 editions of this book were published by Tantor Media.

Editions: 1400100747, 1400108454

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