Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Entry on Willa Cather, Janis P. Stout - Willa Cather, The Person

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WILLA CATHER, THE PERSON

As we have seen, Willa Cather was born to a stable, prosperous family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. As an adult she would shave three years off her age, claiming to have been born in 1876, and on at least one occasion claiming that her younger brothers Roscoe and Douglass were older than she, but her first biographer, E. K. Brown, located a letter from her father, Charles F. Cather, to his brother and sister-in-law, dated January 22, 1874, that indisputably establishes her birthdate.¹ This letter shows, too, that the family called her Willie from early infancy—a fact the importance of which will become evident later. For formal usage, the awkward middle syllable of her given name, Wilella, was soon dropped, and it became Willa.

Cather's father made his living by raising sheep. Cather herself would remember his gentleness and his care for his sheep dogs and how he sometimes made them little leather boots to...

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1. Introduction
2. Essay: Introduction
3. Willa Cather, The Person
4. The Writer At Work
5. Cather's Works
6. Reception Of Willa Cather's Works
7. Cather As Studied
8. Cather On Cather
9. Bibliography
10. Copyright

1. Willa Cather