Summary
Summary of A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 6 h 25 min5 h 5 min fast, 7 h 40 min slow
- Length
- 91,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
Private lives carry powerful questions
A man carries a woman through a blizzard, and a young fiddler smashes his violin across his knee. Cather begins with people whose actions ask what they need, remember or cannot bear to lose. Prairie farmers, a runaway wife, a dying lawyer and a sculptor haunted by a dead uncle all enter these pages.
The collection brings together early stories, reviews and essays. Across settings from the Nebraska Divide to Paris and New York, private lives become a way of exploring what moves people.
Key idea 2
Work is not the only worth
On the Nebraska plains, Peter Sadelack lives under the rule of his son Antone.
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Key idea 3
Beauty returns to a narrowed life
At a revival, Eric Hermannson responds to the preacher Asa Skinner by breaking his violin across his knee.
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Key idea 4
Shared memories reopen a marriage
Hester Tavener speaks freely, while her prosperous farmer husband William usually answers with silence.
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Key idea 5
Nelly shines through other people's affection
Peggy introduces Nelly Deane backstage at a Christmas Eve performance in Riverbend.
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Key idea 6
Returning home unsettles old loyalties
Nils Ericson returns to Nebraska after twelve years abroad, carrying a flute case.
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Key idea 7
City life exposes cold bargains
The city stories turn toward money, appearances and the uses people make of one another.
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Key idea 8
Art gains strength by leaving out
Cather's admiration for Frank Norris rests partly on his ability to make a whole street feel present in a few pages.
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Key idea 9
Small objects hold human feeling
A violin, a flag, a ring or a canary can carry more than its practical purpose.
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Go deeper: the whole of A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
About 6 h 40 min to read.Start freeWho it’s for
You will enjoy this if you love prairie stories, quiet portraits of ordinary lives, sharp opinions about famous writers, or a gifted author finding her voice.
What this book is
What would push a man to carry a woman through a blizzard, or a young fiddler to smash his violin across his knee? Willa Cather answers with prairie farmers, a runaway wife, a dying lawyer and a sculptor haunted by a dead uncle. This book gathers her early work, written for magazines and for newspapers in Nebraska and Pittsburgh.
It holds twelve stories, from the Nebraska Divide to Paris and New York, then reviews and essays from the 1890s onward.
In this summary
- 1Private lives carry powerful questionsFree
- 2Work is not the only worth
- 3Beauty returns to a narrowed life
- 4Shared memories reopen a marriage
- 5Nelly shines through other people's affection
- 6Returning home unsettles old loyalties
- 7City life exposes cold bargains
- 8Art gains strength by leaving out
- 9Small objects hold human feeling
The Nebraska plains press hard on exiles
The book opens on the Nebraska plains, where settlers from Europe farm land that gives little back. In Peter, Peter Sadelack, an old Bohemian who once played second violin in a theater in Prague, lives on a homestead ruled by his son Antone. Antone wants to sell the old man's fiddle for cash. Peter clings to it and to his memories of a French actress.
Antone's corn is the best tended in the county, so the neighbors call him a promising young man. Peter drinks when he can and dreams of music, so they call him worthless. The tale quietly asks who counts as good when only work is counted.
On the Divide gives us Canute Canuteson, a seven-foot Norwegian who lives alone and carves devils and dancing skeletons into his windowsills. Ten winters of wind, drought and fire have worn him down. Then pretty Lena laughs at his size and silence, and Canute answers in a way that is rough, comic and a little frightening.
In these first tales, the land shapes the heart as surely as it shapes the field.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
What does the contrast between Peter and Antone call into question?
Right. “The tale quietly asks who counts as good when only work is counted.”Not quite. “The tale quietly asks who counts as good when only work is counted.”
What opens a path toward tenderness between Hester and William Tavener?
Right. “The two trade stories about the elephant, the clown and the cruel new boots.”Not quite. “The two trade stories about the elephant, the clown and the cruel new boots.”
What principle does Cather express in On the Art of Fiction?
Right. “She says art should simplify, as Millet did when he painted The Sower.”Not quite. “She says art should simplify, as Millet did when he painted The Sower.”
Go deeper: the whole of A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
About 6 h 40 min to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 91,800 words
- Reading timeAbout 6 h 25 min
Questions about A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
What is A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays by Willa Cather about?
It gathers twelve early stories, most about Nebraska settlers, runaway lovers and city workers, with reviews and essays on writers such as Poe, Twain, Norris and Crane, showing how Cather shaped her ideas about fiction.
Which stories appear in this Willa Cather collection?
Part one holds Peter, On the Divide, Eric Hermannson's Soul, The Sentimentality of William Tavener, The Namesake, The Enchanted Bluff, The Joy of Nelly Deane, The Bohemian Girl, Consequences, The Bookkeeper's Wife, Ardessa and Her Boss.
When did Willa Cather write these pieces?
The reviews and essays begin in the 1890s and extend into later years, alongside early work for newspapers in Nebraska and Pittsburgh. The stories appeared in magazines early in her career, with some published in 1916, 1918 and 1919.
What is the Divide in Cather's stories?
The Divide is the high, flat plain in Nebraska where Norwegian, Danish, Bohemian and other settlers farm. Cather uses it as a setting of wind, drought, loneliness and endurance in several of the early tales.
Is it worth reading Cather's reviews as well as her stories?
Yes, because the reviews are lively and opinionated, and they show what she admired. She praises Poe, Norris and James with passion, scolds others, and states her belief that art should simplify.
Cite this edition
Cather, Willa. A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-collection-of-stories-reviews-and-essays.
Cather, W. (2026). A collection of stories, reviews and essays. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-collection-of-stories-reviews-and-essays
Cather, Willa. A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-collection-of-stories-reviews-and-essays.
@book{cather2026collection,
author = {Cather, Willa},
title = {A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-collection-of-stories-reviews-and-essays}
}
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