Nonfiction

During her career as a novelist, which began with the publication of Alexander's Bridge in 1912, Willa Cather published a significant number of nonfiction pieces, ranging from a ghost-written autobiography to journalistic essays on theater and music to brief open letters responding to questions about her fiction. Many of these pieces were collected in her 1936 volume, Not Under Forty and the posthumously published Willa Cather On Writing (1949). However, a significant number of Cather's nonfiction pieces are unavailable in modern collections.

The Cather Archive is building a collection of electronic transcriptions and page images from the first periodical publications of Cather's uncollected nonfiction. Currently we have a series of five articles Cather published in McClure's Magazine between 1913 and 1915 on American theater, dance, and music; S.S. McClure's My Autobiography, which Cather wrote for McClure and which was published in McClure's Magazine in 1913-1914; and Cather's two-part series in The Red Cross Magazine.

My Autobiography by S.S. McClure
     McClure's Magazine, October 1913-May 1914

"Plays of Real Life"
     McClure's Magazine, 40 (March 1913): 63-72

"Training for the Ballet: Making American Dancers"
     McClure's Magazine, 41 (October 1913): 85-95

"Three American Singers: Louise Homer, Geraldine Farrar, Olive Fremstad"
     McClure's Magazine, 42 (December 1913): 33-48

"New Types of Acting: The Character Actor Displaces the Star"
     McClure's Magazine, 42 (February 1914): 41-51

"The Sweated Drama"
     McClure's Magazine, 44 (January 1915): 17-28

"Roll Call on the Prairies"
     The Red Cross Magazine, 14 (July 1919): 27-31

"The Education You Have to Fight For"
     The Red Cross Magazine, 14 (October 1919): 54-55, 68-70