Uncle Valentine and Other Stories - (Bison Book S) by Willa Cather (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The seven stories in this volume were written during the ascending and perhaps most triumphant years of Willa Cather's career, the period during which she published nine books, including My Ántonia, A Lost Lady, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

For the most part ironic in tone, these stories are, as Bernice Slote observes, bound by the geometrics of urban life--streets and offices, workers and firms, the business world of New York and Pittsburgh, the cities which by 1929 Willa Cather had known well for over thirty years." In her introduction, Slote discusses their biographical elements, connections with earlier and later work, and the intricate patterns that lie below the lucid, shimmering surface of Willa Cather's prose.

From the Back Cover

The seven stories in this volume were written during the ascending and perhaps most triumphant years of Willa Cather's career, the period during which she published nine books, including My Antonia, A Lost Lady, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Review Quotes

"Bernice Slote has introduced the collection with a remarkably lucid and illuminating essay."

"It is an extraordinary sensation to encounter the immense talent of Willa Cather again. . . . What a wonderful rediscovery [this] book affords!"-"Virginia Quarterly Review"

"The seven stories of the new collection hold their own artistically by giving us fresh explorations of the temper of the time. Their strength, moreover, tells us something important about Cather the fictionist, namely, that short narrative was not a lesser mode for her, not a five-finger exercise for a more capacious composition."-"Thought"

"Uncle Valentine and Other Stories is a treasure."

About the Author

Bernice Slote, a distinguished Cather scholar, was a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her publications included editions of April Twilights (1903); Poems of Willa Cather (1962, 1968); The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather's First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893-1896 (1967); and Uncle Valentine and Other Stories: Willa Cather's Uncollected Short Fiction (1973, 1986), all published by the UNP.