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Hello, welcome to the podcast.

We are continuing our story of Willa Cather today on the History of Literature.

Okay, hello everyone. How are you? I'm Jack Wilson. I am fine. Let's go straight at him.

On Monday, we talked to Lauren Marino of the about her new book, Bookish Brawds, about

the women who wrote themselves into history. And we spent some time on McClure's magazine,

the muck raking McClure's, which took on big oil at the start of the 20th century, with

heroic journalists like Ida Tarbel and which led to developments like the Federal Trade Commission

here in the United States and the rise of third party trust-busting candidate, Teddy Roosevelt.

After that brief peek for McClure's, the writers rebelled and went off to start another

magazine, and Sam McClure looked around and found Willa Cather.

Who could edit? She was a perfectionist. Lauren told us. And she eventually devoted her

career to fiction with the underrated skill of being a good editor of her own work.

We're going to hear some of that work today. We'll hear some passages from my antennae

to give you a taste of what it's like. Where was she in life when she wrote it? Let's see,

she was in her mid-40s at that point, but let's back up. She was born in 1873 and moved

to Nebraska when she was nine. She graduated from high school in 1890 and started college

at the University of Nebraska, where she was already succeeding as a writer. Early on, she

signed her name William, but she dropped that for her real name Willa. And she could write

at a professional level. And remember, these were the years, the 1890s, the

arts, the 1910s, when print was king before audio and visual took over. There were a

million outlets that were hungry for news and columns and stories. In her first year

...