Idaho Commission for Libraries

The Professor's House by Willa Cather 

On this page:

Book Summary  |  Author Biography  |  Bibliography  |  Discussion Questions  |  Other links

Summary

The Professor's House is the story of Godfrey St. Peter, a man in his fifties who seems to have achieved success: professional status as an academic, material wealth and social standing, and  a devoted family. But all is not as it seems. St. Peter is confronted with aging and an accompanying loss of his intellectual prowess, professional challenges to his independence as a scholar, and domestic upheaval. Over the course of a year, St. Peter struggles to come to terms with his personal and professional choices.

Biography of Willa Cather

Willa Cather was born in 1893 in Virginia. She moved with her family at age nine to Read Cloud, Nebraska, which became the setting of several novels. She attended the Univeristy of Nebraska before beginning a career as a journalist, teacher, and writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1923. Willa Cather died at age 73 in 1947.

Bibliography

Novels:

Alexander's Bridge (1912)

O Pioneers! (1913)

The Song of the Lark (1915)

My Antonia (1918)

One of Ours (1921)

A Lost Lady (1923)

The Professor's House (1925)

My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Shadows on the Rock (1931)

Lucy Gayheart (1935)

Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)

Short Stories:

The Troll Garden (1905)

Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920)

Obscure Destinies (1932)

Verse:

April Twilights (1903)

Essays:

Not Under Forty (1936)

Discussion Questions

For questions developed by Random House, Vintage Publishers, see the listing for The Professor's House under www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/professors_house.html

Web Sites

A comprehensive site devoted to Willa Cather can be found at icg.harvard.edu.

From a web site hosted by the Kutzdown University of Pennsylvania for their distance learning classes, maintained by Dr. Bette A. Reagan, read this article which contains a Cather biography, a bibliography of Cather's works, a list of criticisms, and awards and honors. www.kutztown.edu/~reagan/cather.html

Visit the online version of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation, located in Cather's childhood home of Red Cloud, Nebraska: www.willacather.org/

For more information on the research Cather did at Mesa Verde for her novel The Professor's House, read a paper presented to the 1999 Fall Cather Symposium: "Willia Cather on Mesa Verde," by Amy Kort, University of Wisconsin-Madison. www.willacather.org/Newsletter/Spring2000/WillaCatheronMesaVerde.htm

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