Short Fiction

In addition to presenting The Troll Garden and Youth and the Bright Medusa , Cather's 1905 and 1920 books of short stories, the Cather Archive is building a collection of electronic transcriptions and page images from the first periodical publications of Cather's short fiction. Early twentieth century magazines often accompanied fiction with illustrations, and the initial publication of Cather's short fiction is no exception. Our online presentation aims to give a visitor to the Cather Archive access to Cather's short fiction the way it first appeared in her lifetime. At present, we have:

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1. "Lou, the Prophet" The Hesperian , (October 15, 1892): 7-10.
2. "Peter" The Hesperian , 22 (November 24, 1892): 10-12.
3. "A Tale of the White Pyramid" The Hesperian , 22 (December 22, 1892): 8-11.
4. "The Son of the Celestial" The Hesperian , 22 (January 15, 1893): 7-10.
5. "The Elopement of Allen Poole" The Hesperian , 22 (April 15, 1893): 4-7.
6. "The Clemency of the Court" The Hesperian , 22 (October 26, 1893): 3-7.
7. "'The Fear that Walks by Noonday'" The Sombrero , (1895): 224-231.
8. "On the Divide" Overland Monthly , 27 (January 1896): 65-75.
9. "A Night at Greenway Court" Nebraska Literary Magazine , I (June 1896): 215-224.
10. "The Princess Baladina—Her Adventure" The Home Monthly , VI (August 1896): 20-21.
11. "Tommy, the Unsentimental" The Home Monthly , VI (August 1896): 6-7.
12. "The Count of Crow's Nest" (Part I) The Home Monthly , VI (September 1896): 9-11.
13. "The Count of Crow's Nest" (Part II) The Home Monthly , VI (October 1896): 12-13; 22-23.
14. "Wee Winkie's Wanderings" The National Stockman and Farmer , (November 26, 1896): 18.
15. "The Burglar's Christmas" [signed "Elizabeth L. Seymour"] The Home Monthly , VI (December 1896): 8-10.
16. "The Strategy of the Were-Wolf Dog" The Home Monthly , VI (December 1896): 13, 14, 24.
17. "A Resurrection" The Home Monthly , VI (April 1897): 4-8.
18. "The Prodigies" The Home Monthly , VI (July 1897): 9-11.
19. "Nanette: An Aside" The Home Monthly , VII (August 1897): 5-6.
20. "The Way of the World" The Home Monthly , VI (April 1898): 10-11.
21. "The West Bound Train" The Courier , (September 30, 1898): 3, 8-9.
22. "Eric Hermannson's Soul" The Cosmopolitan , 28 (April 1900): 633-44.
23. "The Dance at Chevalier's" [signed "Henry Nicklemann"] The Library , I (April 28, 1900): 12-13.
24. "The Sentimentality of William Tavener" The Library , I (May 12, 1900): 13-14.
25. "The Affair at Grover Station" (Part I) The Library , I (June 16, 1900): 3-4.
26. "The Affair at Grover Station" (Part II) The Library , I (June 23, 1900): 14-15.
27. "A Singer's Romance" The Library , I (July 28, 1900): 15-16.
28. "The Conversion of Sum Loo" The Library , I (11 August 1900): 4-6.
29. "Jack-a-Boy" The Saturday Evening Post , 173 (March 30, 1901): 4-5; 25.
30. "El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional" New England Magazine , 24 (June 1901): 357-369
31. "The Professor's Commencement" New England Magazine , 26 (June 1902): 481-488
32. "The Treasure of Far Island" New England Magazine , 27 (October 1902): 234-249
33. "A Death in the Desert" Scribner's Magazine , 33 (January 1903): 109-121
34. "A Wagner Matinée" Everybody's Magazine , 10 (March 1904): 325-328
35. The Troll Garden New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905
36. "The Sculptor's Funeral" McClure's Magazine , 24 (January 1905): 329-336
37. "Paul's Case" McClure's Magazine , 25 (May 1905): 74-83
38. "The Namesake" McClure's Magazine , 28 (March 1907): 493-497
39. "The Profile" McClure's Magazine , 29 (June 1907): 135-141
40. "The Willing Muse" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine , 74 (August 1907): 550-557
41. "Eleanor's House" McClure's Magazine , 29 (October 1907): 135-141
42. "On the Gulls' Road" McClure's Magazine , 32 (December 1908): 145-152
43. "The Enchanted Bluff" Harper's Monthly Magazine , 118 (April 1909): 774-781
44. "The Joy of Nelly Deane" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine , 82 (October 1911): 859-867
45. "Behind the Singer Tower" Collier's , 49 (May 18, 1912): 16-17; 41
46. "The Bohemian Girl" McClure's Magazine , 39 (August 1912): 420-443
47. "Consequences" McClure's Magazine , 46 (November 1915): 30-32; 63-64
48. "The Bookkeeper's Wife" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine , 92 (May 1916): 51-59
49. "The Diamond Mine" McClure's Magazine , 47 (October 1916): 7-11; 66-70
50. "The Gold Slipper" Harper's Monthly Magazine , 134 (January 1917): 166-174
51. "Ardessa" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine , 96 (May 1918): 105-116
52. "Scandal" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine , 98 (August 1919): 433-445
53. "Her Boss" Smart Set , 60.2 (October 1919): 95-108
54. "Her Boss" Smart Set [British Edition], 59.2 (October 1919): 175-188
55. Youth and the Bright Medusa New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.
56. "Coming, Eden Bower!" Smart Set , 62.4 (August 1920): 3-25
57. "Coming, Eden Bower!" Smart Set [British Edition], 61.4 (August 1920): 307-329.

Cather as Short Story Writer

Cather's first published short stories appeared in student publications in 1892, while she attended the University of Nebraska. When she moved to Pittsburgh in 1896 as editor of a new magazine, The Home Monthly, she had to fill many of its pages at first with her own work, under a variety of pseudonyms. By 1900, when the proliferation of popular magazines had created a large and comparatively lucrative market for short fiction, Cather's stories began to be published in nationally circulated magazines such as Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner's Magazine. In 1905, a few of these stories, plus some newly written ones, were collected in Cather's first book of fiction, The Troll Garden. Her work had attracted the attention of S. S. McClure, who brought her to New York in 1906 as an editor of his outstanding popular magazine, McClure's, where much of Cather's work appeared between 1905 and 1916. She resigned as managing editor in 1912 to devote herself to writing; her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, was serialized in McClure's that year. Thereafter, she wrote stories only occasionally, at first to supplement her income as she established herself as a novelist, and later as a break from her longer work. Four of the short stories from The Troll Garden were revised and incorporated into the 1920 collection of stories, Youth and the Bright Medusa, the first book she published with Alfred A. Knopf. Three later stories were published together in Obscure Destinies (1932); Cather wrote three more short stories after this, but they were not published until after her death, in The Old Beauty and Others (New York: Knopf, 1948). The other stories she wrote from 1915-1929 were not collected until 1973, in Uncle Valentine and Other Stories.