In 1915, Cather published her third novel, The Song of the Lark, which relates the story of a Colorado woman who matures into a major opera star. Many critics consider this novel to be Cather’s artistic manifesto in that the novel’s protagonist, Thea Kronborg, chooses an artistic career over marriage.
In 1916, Cather traveled extensively throughout Wyoming and New Mexico. During this trip, she resolved to simplify her writing by stripping away unnecessary descriptions. She employed this resolution in her novel My Ántonia, which relates the story of a Czechoslovakian woman who endures scandal and unrequited love to find peace in rural Nebraska. Along with Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Ántonia is considered among Cather’s finest fiction.
Cather’s next novel, One of Ours, was awarded the 1922 Pulitzer Prize. She followed it with the novels A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House, which critics claim reveal Cather’s dislike of Jazz Age materialism and relaxed morality. This dislike is credited for Cather’s turning to historical subject matter for her next novels, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Shadows on the Rock (1931), and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940).
By the time she died on April 24, 1947, from a cerebral hemorrhage, Willa Cather had published twelve novels, fifty-eight short stories, and several collections of essays. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Prix Femina Americain, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters gold medal. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
