The Sculptor's Funeral

Willa Cather is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for her novels and short fiction based on life in the Great Plains. Her works include O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, One of Ours.

Born on December 7, 1873, Cather moved with her family to frontier Nebraska at the age of nine, where she grew up among immigrants settling the Great Plains. This period influenced much of her later writing. After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Cather moved to Pittsburgh, where she worked as a magazine editor and schoolteacher. In her early thirties, she moved to New York City to accept a position with McClure’s Magazine.

Indicative of the internal struggles Cather faced in the West before transitioning to life in the city, her stories emphasize the contrast between the harsh, unforgiving environment of the Western plains and the urban centers of the Northeast. As in “The Sculptor’s Funeral,” Cather’s fiction often centers around the struggle between life and art and demonstrates motifs of nostalgia and exile by contrasting domestic spaces with the physical landscapes of the Great Plains.