Sue Hallgarth's Blog, page 2
September 9, 2013
Grave Matters: Willa Cather and Edith Lewis
Posted by Sue Hallgarth on September 9, 2013 It is unclear why James Woodress twice chose to refer to Isabelle McClung as the “great love” of Cather’s life. But doing so set the stage for identifying Cather as a lesbian: a lesbian jilted by McClung, who by implication “returned” to the heterosexual fold through her 1916 marriage to the violinist Jan Hambourg. Ostensibly leaving Cather to mourn her...
July 18, 2013
Romantic Notions: Willa Cather and Isabelle McClung Hambourg
Posted by Sue Hallgarth on July 18, 2013 Cather had romantic “crushes” on her female school friends, fell deeply in love with a striking Pittsburgh girl, Isabelle McClung, and, after Isabelle’s marriage, spent much of her life with a devoted companion (and Cather’s first biographer), Edith Lewis. There are very few love letters in the Selected Letters, since Cather destroyed all her letters to...
May 31, 2013
Telling Lives/Telling Lies: Willa Cather Biographers
Posted by Sue Hallgarth on May 31, 2013 An excerpt from an Interview with Andrew Jewell, co-editor of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (Knopf, 2013) by Rebecca Cross in “A New Peek at Willa Cather’s Private Life,” The Big Read Blog, May 21, 2013: What do you think the anthology reveals about Cather, both as a writer and as a woman? JEWELL: To my mind, it upends a lot of the stereotypes about...
May 18, 2013
Events
2017–2018 readings and signings— Death Comes: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery October 5 6 pm reading / signing Corrales Community Library 84 West La Entrada Road Corrales NM 505.897.0733 map October 18 12 pm Op.Cit.Books–Taos mystery book club discussion and signing Stella’s Italian Restaurant 112 Camino de la Placita Taos NM 575.751.0100 map Call or email for reservations. Thank you.
May 8, 2013
The Harris House
Posted by Sue Hallgarth on May 9, 2013 Built in 1901-1903 for Sarah Fisk Bacon Harris (1821-1912), the Harris house was new when Willa Cather met Edith Lewis in Harris’ parlor. This house replaced Harris’ earlier Italianate house at the same location: 1630 K Street in Lincoln, Nebraska. In the introduction to her memoir, Willa Cather Living (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) Edith Lewis describes...
May 3, 2013
Willa Cather, Edith Lewis & “Feminine Friendships”
Posted by Sue Hallgarth on May 6, 2013 Now that Willa Cather’s selected letters are finally out, it comes as no surprise that reviewers are again raising questions about Cather’s sexual identity and her attitude toward “feminine friendships,” a term she used in an 1892 letter to Louise Pound. Tom Perrotta in his April 25, 2013 review of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather in The New York Times...
