Death Comes for the Archbishop

Quite simply a masterpiece … I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells …This is a book which I go on rereading – A.N. WilsonIts whole effect works slowly and mysteriously in the reader, and cannot be summed up … Cather’s composed acceptance of mystery is a major, and rare, artistic achievement – A. S. ByattA tremendous, ranging story, economical and distilled as poetry – Jane Gardam

Willa Cather was a Pulitzer prize-winning American writer, best known for her novels of Nebraskan frontier life. Born in 1873 near Winchester, Virginia, she moved with her family to Catherton, Nebraska in 1883, and the landscape went on to have a formative effect on her. Before becoming a full-time writer, Cather worked as a journalist, a magazine editor and a teacher. Her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, was published in 1912, followed by titles including O Pioneers! (1913); The Song of the Lark (1915); My Ántonia (1918); One of Ours (1922), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize; Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940). She died in New York in 1947.