Willa Cather: Part II

Note: Read Part I

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

Willa began college at the University of Nebraska in 1890. Determined to become a doctor, science courses were Willa’s primary focus at first. But it wasn’t long before a professor submitted one of her English essays to the Nebraska State Journal. When it appeared in print, Willa saw her name in type and felt something shift. “That was the beginning of many troubles for me. Up to that time I had planned to specialize in science; I thought I would like to study medicine. But what youthful vanity can be unaffected by the sight of itself in print! It was a kind of hypnotic effect,” she later wrote.