"This volume places Cather in the midst of the movement called High Modernism by asking, not what is our definition of Modernism and our canon of Modernist texts, but what was hers? The literary works most esteemed by Cather and by her critics are telling. Cather and her contemporaries thought that stories about immigrants and women, told in camera-never-blinks realist prose, would be exceedingly risky - and therefore fascinating - to readers."--BOOK JACKET.

"It is one thing to report a news story and another to use the same material in one's art - and Cather did intend that her literary works become "art" and that they achieve lasting fame. This volume details how Cather came to transform the office routine of memos and deadlines, linotypes and the business trip, into the artistry of her early stories, poems, biographies, and novels."--BOOK JACKET.