Return to Bibliography of Willa Cather's Readings
Bibliography: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, Leo
- Title
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Author
- Tolstoy, Leo
- Date
- Genre
- fiction
- Note Source
- O Pioneers! Scholarly Edition, "Historical Essay" 291
- Note Relating to Cather
- In a letter to H.L. Mencken, "Cather writes that when she was fourteen she came upon four of Tolstoy's works—Anna Karenina, The Cossacks, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and The Kreutzer Sonata—and for the next three years read them over and over again. She says that this reading so strongly colored the way she saw her own world in America that she eventually turned to a long apprenticeship with Henry James and Mrs. Wharton to get over it. Yet in writing O Pioneers!, she wonders if she has really recovered from the Russian influence."
