Willa Sibert Cather was born on December 7, 1873, on a farm in northern Virgina. Ten years later the family moved to the Nebraska frontier. She was educated at home until high school and later attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. After college, Cather moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a journalist. In 1906, she joined the staff of McClure's Magazine in New York City.
Cather began her career as a novelist in 1912 with her works reflecting the Nebraska plains and the people who inhabited them. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for One of Ours, a novel concerning World War I.
During her middle-age years, Cather appears to have experienced a spiritual rebirth and wrote four novels concerning the value of religion in life, including Death Comes for the Archbishop . The last sixteen years of her life she wrote little. She died on April 24, 1947.
From the guide to the Willa Cather Collection Mss. 152c., 1865-1974, (Texas Woman's University, the Woman's Collection)
