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