The Diamond Mine | Historical Context

The Diamond Mine Historical Context

Music in the Early Twentieth Century

In the first decade of the twentieth century in the United States, music was an expanding industry. Popular music came in many different forms, including ballads, ragtime, the blues, and show tunes, and Americans from all walks of life experienced it. Companies producing sheet music, instruments, phonographs, and other types of musical accessories found a huge demand for their products. Classical music was also finding an audience with Americans, due to the increasing number of symphony orchestras nationwide and the growth of the recording industry. At the same time, popular singers, like Lillian Nordica, were becoming international stars as a result of their performances.

Lillian Nordica

As James Woodress noted in Willa Cather: A Literary Life, "The Diamond Mine" "is based on the life of Lillian Nordica, whose last husband, George Young, is very thinly disguised in the story as the unscrupulous, mercenary character Jerome Brown." Everybody knew this fact, and...
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