Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley

#1

1951

"Many years ago, on the occasion of Willa Cather's seventieth birthday, E. K. Brown, then Professor of English at the University of Chicago, wrote an appreciation of her work which appeared in the Yale Review. This so appealed to her that a friendly correspondence with Brown ensued, and after her death it was agreed that e would embark on a full-length critical biography. Brown died very unexpectedly at the early age of forty-five before he had quite completed what gave every promise of being a work of major stature, which would win for him reputation his friends and colleagues knew he richly deserved. Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Leon Edel, himself no mean writer of literary criticism, a man who had known Brown well when they were both students at the Sorbonne in their younger days, undertook to complete the work from the very copious notes left by Brown and with the active co-operation of Miss Edith Lewis, Miss Cahter's literary executrix and trustee. The result is a work that seems to me ideally to fulfill its purpose. Here is all the biographical information anyone is likely ever to gather about Willa Cather, and a critique of all her writings which is absolutely first-rate. It is the only authorized biography of the author of DEATH COME FOR THE ARCHBISHOP, and does the job so well that I think no one is likely to attempt it again for a very long time to come."--BOOK JACKET.