Willa Cather constructed My Ántonia from memories about people and places that were very dear to her and wove them together to form a larger story. For this reason, the body of the novel came easily for her. The introduction, however, was difficult to write, and she was never satisfied with it.
In the original introduction, written for the 1918 edition, the female narrator (possibly Cather herself) and Jim Burden meet on a train west of Chicago. He's a lawyer for a major railroad company, and she is a writer. The narrator dislikes Jim's wife and tells the reader why at great length. Despite his failed marriage, however, Jim has retained his romantic disposition and his love for the West, and he remains as impressionable as she remembers he was when they were children.
The narrator and Jim reminisce about growing up together on the Nebraska prairie, and their talk keeps returning to Ántonia, who "seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood." The narrator believes that Jim can tell Ántonia's story better than she: ". . . he had had opportunities that I, as a little girl who watched her come and go, had not." They both agree to record their memories of Ántonia.
The following winter, Jim arrives at the narrator's door with a completed manuscript, but he finds that his friend has jotted down only a few notes. Jim is surprised at the mention of notes. "I didn't arrange or rearrange," he says. "I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Ántonia's name recalls to me. I suppose it hasn't any form. It hasn't any title, either." He writes "Ántonia" across the face of the manuscript, considers a moment, and then affixes "My" in front of the name. The narrator says that she is presenting us with Jim's manuscript, just as he gave it to her.
