SOURCE: Stouck, David. “Historical Essay.” In O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather, edited by Susan J. Rosowski, Charles W. Mignon, and Kathleen Danker, pp. 283-303. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Stouck traces the publication of Cather's novel and discusses the sources of and influences on the work.

Willa Cather liked to think of O Pioneers! as her first novel. When she sent a copy of the book to her friend Carrie Miner Sherwood in Red Cloud, Nebraska, she wrote on the flyleaf, “This was the first time I walked off on my own feet—everything before was half real and half an imitation of writers whom I admired. In this one I hit the home pasture and found that I was Yance Sorgensen and not Henry James.”¹ O Pioneers!, published in 1913, was in fact Cather's second novel, preceded by Alexander's Bridge in 1912. Her feeling, however...