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My Ántonia (AmazonClassics Edition) by [Willa Cather]

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Willa Cather

My Ántonia (AmazonClassics Edition) Kindle Edition

by Willa Cather (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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When high-powered New York attorney Jim Burden recollects his childhood on the Nebraska prairie, Ántonia Shimerda is at the heart of every memory.

Orphaned at age ten, Jim is traveling west to his grandparents’ home in Black Hawk when he first meets Ántonia, the daughter of a Bohemian family who settles on a neighboring farm. Through sunbaked summers and frigid winters, Ántonia bears the hardships of a young immigrant as she longs for a vanishing past. It is a profound nostalgia for a lost time that Jim now also holds dear as he recalls all that he left behind and that which he’ll never lose.

Set against a defining and reflecting midwestern landscape—melancholic, nurturing, and changeable—My Ántonia is a celebration of an enduring friendship and a moving tribute to the courage and resolve of pioneering immigrants.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as My Ántonia, this edition of My Ántonia (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

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Publication date

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Willa Cather (1873–1947), an American author and Pulitzer Prize recipient, is best known for her portrayals of frontier life, European immigrants, and Native American culture on the Great Plains in such novels as O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia.

Cather moved from her hometown in Virginia to Nebraska when she was a child. Her father, Charles, farmed the land for nearly two years before settling with his family in the prairie town of Red Cloud. The land and people she encountered left an indelible mark on the young writer.

From Library Journal

Cather's classic gets the red carpet treatment here. Along with the full text, the volume also includes historical essays and explanatary notes by scholar James Woodress along with 15 photographs and two maps.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Yarman's diction is very precise and measured. Both the pace and the articulate style make this version an excellent choice for ESL programs. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

An enduring literary masterpiece first published in 1918, this hauntingly eloquent classic is an inspiring reminder of the rich past we have inherited. Willa Cather's lustrous prose, infused with a passion for the land, summons forth the hardscrabble days of the immigrant pioneer woman on the Nebraska plains, while etching a deeply moving portrait of an entire community. As Jim Burden revisits his childhood friendship with the free-spirited Antonia Shimerda, we come to understand the sheer fortitude of homesteaders on the prairie, the steadfast bonds cultivated there, and the abiding memories that such vast expanses inspire. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching Antonia, whose unfailing industry and infectious enthusiasm for life exemplify the triumphant vitality of an era. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

My Antonia is one of the best-loved classics of American literature, read by generations of American high-school students, with good reason....The structure of the novel is beautifully wrought, the writing and character development excellent. Cummings's narration is also well done, with changes in accents and dialects reflecting the adjustment of the characters to their changing lives. --KLIATT (starred review)

My Antonia is one of the best-loved classics of American literature, read by generations of American high-school students, with good reason....The structure of the novel is beautifully wrought, the writing and character development excellent. Cummings's narration is also well done, with changes in accents and dialects reflecting the adjustment of the characters to their changing lives. --Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women

My Antonia is packed with the feel of the country. A scant paragraph sets you out on the plains, and the breath of the wind that billows the long grass never leaves your face.--Chicago Daily News

No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.--H. L. Mencken --.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction. Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants, not only survives her father's suicide, poverty, and a failed romance, she triumphs with high spirits.

From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up--In Jim Burden's accounting of his life with, and without, Antonia Shimerda, listeners are transported to the hardscrabble Nebraska prairie and the rural immigrant experience. When Jim first sees the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia, disembarking from the same train that is taking him West to live with his grandparents, he has no idea the impact they will have on his life. Nostalgically, he remembers the good and bad times they had on their respective farms and creates his portrait of Antonia, an independent and tough survivor. The brief biography of author Willa Cather at the beginning of the CD explains how her life mirrors Antonia's life in many ways, helping listeners understand the context of the story. Patrick Lawlor's rich, fluid voice lends an air of sophistication to Burden, reinforcing the class structure inherent at the beginning of the 20th century. Lawlor's attempts to create voices for the characters often falls flat. Since the novel is Burden's reminiscence, it would have been better told in Burden's voice alone. Since My Antonia continues to be a staple in many English curriculums, this is a good audiobook for schools and public libraries to have available.--Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia. It is the finest thing of its sort ever done in America.”—H. L. Mencken

“Can one name another American novel whose emotional quality is so true, so warm, so human as that of My Ántonia.”—Clifton Fadiman

“To reread Cather is to rediscover an arresting chapter in the national past.”—Los Angeles Times

“The time will come when she'll be ranked above Hemingway.”—Leon Edel --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Amazon.com Review

It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.

Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.

As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

I first heard of Antonia 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 travelled 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.

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watchcharm, and for me a Life of Jesse James, which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from "across the water" whose destination was the same as ours.

"They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is 'We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.' She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!"

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to Jesse James. Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: "Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west?"

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lanternlight. He might have stepped out of the pages of Jesse James. He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.

I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land-slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheepfold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.

II

I do not remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.

"Had a good sleep, Jimmy?" she asked briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, "My, how you do look like your father!" I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. "Here are your clean clothes," she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. "But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about."

"Down to the kitchen" struck me as curious; it was always "out in the kitchen" at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed-the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little halfwindows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.

"Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy."

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, "Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!" Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.

After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.

While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat-he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbours there.

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular-so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a "perfect gentleman," and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his "chaps" and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design-roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels.

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word "Selah." "He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah." I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.

Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk-until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts-comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and cruved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Willa Cather was an American author and pastoralist known for her vivid depictions of the American Midwest and its inhabitants. Her works include Alexander’s Bridge, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and many more. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours in 1923. After receiving great acclaim upon its publication in 1918, My Ántonia was considered an instant classic. Cather continued to write until later in her life despite suffering from an enflamed tendon in her hand. She died in New York City at age seventy-three. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0769WQ44Y
Publisher ‏ : ‎ AmazonClassics (February 27, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 27, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 756 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #90,039 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #81 in Classic Historical Fiction
- #88 in Historical Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #186 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)

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Maryland Mom

A wonderful grounded read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

This book carries me along through a time and place, allowing me to feel it, as if a good friend were telling me a story. This is the third time I have read this book. I am sure I will read it again.

Helpful

Ana'FichesdeLectures

"she was, oh, she was still my Ántonia!" (p. 109)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2014

Verified Purchase

"My Antonia" is part of my [reading required list from High School] which comprises 48 books in total. It’s the first book of the list I read officially, starting the countdown. This novel is the last of the Great Plains Trilogy.

"My Antonia" is a beautiful novel celebrating the gift of everlasting friendship. The main character, Jim Burden, shares his childhood upbringing with his grandparents in Nebraska, at the beginning of the 20th Century. There he meets, the Shimerdas, a Bohemian immigrant family. Jim became best friends with their daughter, Antonia.

Jim’s account is special because we witness his genuine and compassionate approach to the European immigrants and his attachment to the land. Through the description of his surroundings, we witness how Jim identifies wholeheartedly to the country lifestyle. How much it contributes to his well being:

"I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 12). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

One of my favorite description of the land marked a definite moment when he encounters Antonia and her family, later on in life, thus embellishing this experience. For an instant, it reminded me of the famous scene of Gone with the Wind where Scarlett stand on top of the mountain and promised to never go hungry in her life.

"For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there."

Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 152). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Apart from this friendship admiration, Jim describes the prejudices of the community towards the European immigrants. The well known, established American families were repulsive in letting their son marry one of these girls. They were stained with bad reputation and were called “Hired Girls”.

"What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who could n’t speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Ántonia’s father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all “hired girls.”"

Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 98). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

I think this was one of the major impediment on Jim and Antonia relationship. Thus contributing to never surpass the status of friendship. We feel Jim’s nostalgia, all along, for what could’ve been. One feels Jim’s regret, sadness and loneliness. Thus, accepting his fate by holding on to their everlasting friendship.

"I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.”"

Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 152). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Having read this novel, I must admit that I may not have appreciated its beauty back in High School. I think I would have found it boring and slow paced. Now that I am more patient and open-minded, I was able to enjoy the storyline and the beautiful narration of the prairie lifestyle. It’s weird to say this but I am glad I read it at this moment and not before. I listened to the audio companion narrated by Jeff Cummings. I was not impressed. It was ok.

[Message of the novel:]

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."

Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 155). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Great Plains Trilogy:

1. "Oh Pioneers!"
2. "The Song of the Lark"
3. "My Antonia"

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Karl Janssen

The power of the prairie

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 20, 2015

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Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia was originally published in 1918. It is the final novel in her Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. Since the three books don’t share any common characters or setting, the designation of trilogy is questionable, so don’t feel like you have to read either of those preceding volumes in order to enjoy this book.

My Ántonia is set in and around the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska. The story is narrated by Jim Burden, an attorney, who recalls memories of his boyhood, in particular his friendship with a girl named Ántonia Shimerda. Jim loses his parents at the age of ten, and moves from Virginia to Nebraska to live on his grandparents’ farm. On the train out West he encounters the Shimerda family, just arrived from Bohemia, who turn out to be his new neighbors. The Shimerdas are a proud and hardworking family, but they don’t take readily to farming the prairie, and they eke out a poor existence form their land. The Burdens befriend the Bohemian family and offer them as much help as they can, but the two families don’t always see eye to eye.

Jim and his grandparents eventually move into the town of Black Hawk. Ántonia is not far behind, for like many immigrant farm girls, she takes a job in town as a household servant and once again becomes Jim’s neighbor. Because the immigrant families don’t speak the language as well as the native-born residents of Black Hawk, they are treated as second-class citizens. No “American” boy would ever consider marrying one of these Norwegian or Bohemian hired girls, yet that doesn’t lessen their attraction. Having been raised in the country, Ántonia and her foreign friends are more free-spirited than their city-bred counterparts, with no inhibitions about socializing or dancing with men. Thus these girls are branded as bad girls by the gossips of the town, whether they deserve such a reputation or not.

In plain-spoken but poetic prose, Cather brilliantly depicts both the pleasures and pains of growing up in small-town middle America. Jim’s recollection of youth includes many nostalgic joys, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. When Cather shows the negative aspects of Black Hawk—its insularity, its conventionality, its narrow-mindedness—she does so in a matter-of-fact way that’s free of condescension or cynicism. The relationship between Jim and Ántonia is fascinating to watch as it progresses, but the supporting cast is equally well-drawn and engaging. Even when Cather goes off on a tangent to examine some of these minor characters, the result is fascinating. The story of Peter and Pavel is a tour de force, and ought to be excerpted and inserted into every high school literature textbook. The book’s final act is a little weak and unimpressive compared to all that came before, yet overall My Ántonia is a masterpiece of American naturalist literature. Cather finds real epic drama in the everyday lives of ordinary people as they try to make a life for themselves in this isolated hamlet on the Great Plains. If you grew up in a small town or rural area, My Ántonia will make you consider your own life and times, and how the people and places you knew in your childhood shaped the person you are today.

My Ántonia is generally considered Cather’s greatest work, though I think it’s a toss-up between this and O Pioneers! The first and third books in the Prairie Trilogy are both excellent, while the middle volume, The Song of the Lark, is clearly the weak link in the chain and a poor fit with the other two in terms of style and subject matter. For any fan of classic literature looking for that Great American Novel, My Ántonia is a must-read.

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FictionFan

A nation of immigrants…

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2022

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One day in the late 19th century, two children arrive separately in Nebraska on the same train. Jim Burden is a ten-year-old boy, recently orphaned and coming to the prairie land to live with his grandparents. Ántonia Shimerda is a couple of years older, immigrating to America from Bohemia with her family. Although from different backgrounds and traditions, the children become friends, learning about the land and wildlife of their new home together as they explore it with some of the other children in the farming neighbourhood. Over the years their friendship will gradually fade as Jim goes off to university and later to live in New York, but he always remembers Ántonia, and now in middle-age has set out to write down his memories of her.

To start, I’ll explain why for me it only rates as four stars – simply put, it has no plot, which unfortunately is one of the things most likely to make me grumpy about a book. Instead it is a description of the short-lived era of pioneering, a wonderful depiction of the land and people’s relationship with it before it was fully tamed, a foundational story of the creation of America, and a coming-of-age tale of Jim, primarily, but also of Ántonia and of the frontier itself.

The writing is excellent, especially in the descriptions of the various settings. The vastness of the landscape, the strength and courage of the pioneers, the rapid development of towns and social order are all portrayed brilliantly, leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s mind – for this reader, more lasting than the lives of our major protagonists, I must admit, who largely felt as if they existed to tie together a rather disparate set of episodes illustrating facets of the frontier life. Ántonia herself disappears completely for large parts of the book and her story is often told at a distance, by some third party telling Jim the latest gossip about her. The introduction in my Oxford World’s Classics edition suggests a long-running debate between people who think the book is fundamentally Ántonia’s story, or Jim’s. I fall into the latter category – for me, this is very definitely Jim’s story, and through him largely Cather’s own. But mostly it feels like a part of America’s story, or of its myth-making of itself as a ‘nation of immigrants’ – that is not to denigrate the myth or to suggest it is untrue, simply to say that all nations form myths from their own history which reflect and influence how they feel about themselves and how they act as a society. And I feel this foundational myth-creation aspect may be why the book has earned its place in the hearts of so many Americans, and as a well-deserved American classic.

6 people found this helpful

Mark Rasdall

Pioneers but not pioneering for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 26, 2021

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I eagerly bought this book, written in 1918, as it is considered by many to be Willa Cather’s masterpiece.

Having read it, I don’t feel any closer to greatness.

The story is told by the orphan – Jim Burden - who travels to Black Hawk in Nebraska to live with his grandparents, where he meets Antonia Shimerda and her family who have had a much longer journey from Bohemia. Living on neighbouring farms they become childhood friends and Jim is asked by Antonia’s mother to teach her two daughters English.

The girls’ father never really wanted to move from his native Bohemia, preferring to spend time with his friends, playing his violin. For him the ‘American Dream’ ends in suicide. Jim’s grandparents move to the edge of Black Hawk where he studies and eventually becomes a lawyer on the East Coast.

Antonia’s life has been hard – both working the land and various positions of domestic drudgery. Eventually – after being duped by a fraudster – she marries and has a large family who Jim meets many years later and resolves to remain close to.

Almost immediately, the isolation of farmsteads on the prairie and the harsh conditions in which such pioneering families had to survive are paramount, as is the poverty and the ever-present mindfulness of the riches of others close at hand. The descriptive prose is lovely until it becomes so much more wallpaper, waiting patiently to witness some action in the room.

Antonia is a tragic figure in many ways. She works extraordinarily hard her whole life and never really gets ahead. Her mother is arrogant and difficult; her father dies; she is abused by seemingly everyone and we are supposed to believe that she ultimately finds salvation in her family, back out there on the prairie. I’m not sure I believe it.

Antonia and Jim remain friends though their different paths through life cause them to live world’s apart until they cross once more. I got a sense of strong friendship between the two but never really love – certainly not the desperation of unrequited love. I didn’t really feel strongly about either of them and, once the interest in and admiration of their will to survive faded, so did my interest in the book.

I enjoyed the first part of the book and absolutely loved the last chapter. When I’d finished it, I just felt there was so much I had missed in between. In terms of character building and plot development it seemed to meander like a small stream along the floor of a largely forgettable valley: much less grand canyon as great hype

2 people found this helpful

Pedro el Malo

A straightforward and direct writing style that is a pleasure to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 2, 2023

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Willa Cather’s novel is primarily a tale of the American North-West in the early 20th century. It tells of the hardships of bitter winters as wagon trains carrying immigrant farmers, their families and belongings across the seemingly endless miles of the high plains. It is above all a tribute to human endurance and perseverance that is beautifully told in a straightforward and direct writing style.

The only thing that made reading the novel a little tedious was the constant barrage of explanatory notes, with several on almost every page. Although some were useful and indeed interesting, many were superfluous and could have been omitted.

Book fiend

Beautiful descriptions of the prairie/farmlands of Nebraska in the late 1800s.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 12, 2021

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This particular edition of Cather's excellent novel has a hugely comprehensive and lengthy introduction as well as notes for the text. Read the book before you read the introduction as otherwise you can get a big bogged down with names and places that mean nothing. The story revolves around 2 principal characters and is told in the first person (Jim Burden) who grows up with the Antonia of the title. Although the teller of the tale is a man the story seems rather to be written as a woman might write it and, of course, it is not a modern novel so ideas and attitudes have changed enormously. The descriptions of life in Nebraska at that time are incredibly real and you can just imagine yourself in amongst the red grass of the prairie and sensing the hardships of that life. The characters all ring true as well. Definitely worth reading. A good one for a book club.

E. Armstrong

Nebraska

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 12, 2022

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Many years ago in the ‘80s, I visited friends in Nebraska ( I am British) and was given a hardback copy of this book as a gift. I started to read it but wasn’t enjoying it much and it got lost in the many house moves I have made. This time, on kindle, I really did enjoy this classic. Beautiful writing and you can see in your minds eye what the author is describing. I found the characterisation a little more difficult because I did not recognise any of these people from my own life . Nevertheless a lovely book to read at bedtime!

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