Although Red Cloud could claim only 2,500 inhabitants, Cather received a public education as well as the benefit of her German neighbor's extensive library. In addition, she took Latin and Greek lessons from an English immigrant and music lessons from a Norwegian woman.
Among her many interests as a young woman was science. Aspiring to be a doctor, Cather followed the town physician on his rounds and assisted him as necessary, going so far as to administer ether to a patient receiving an amputation.
In the early 1890s, she attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and graduated in 1895. As a student, Cather wrote stories, poems, plays, and drama and music criticism. Although medicine was her stated career goal, one of her teachers submitted a Cather essay on Thomas Carlyle to the local newspaper. The experience served as Cather's inauguration into the writing vocation.
In 1896, she was appointed managing editor of the Home Monthly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The following year, she went to work at the Pittsburgh Daily Leader. In 1901, she began teaching Latin and English at Allegheny High School in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, Cather boarded with the wealthy family of her close friend and rumored lover, Isabelle McClung. She would stay with the McClungs between her travels until 1915, when Isabelle married a concert violinist. For the remainder of her life, Cather shared a home with Edith Lewis. Speculation abounds as to the relationships between Cather and Lewis, but the intensely private Cather left no clues to substantiate or refute claims that Cather was a lesbian. In any event, Cather never married and never had children.
