Book Review: Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real-World Writing, Writing the Real World

This tightly edited collection has two objectives: first, to underscore the importance of material objects in Cather\u27s supposedly unfurnished fiction; second, to remind us of the material conditions under which her work - work that seems, at first sight, aloof from commercial consideration - was marketed and sold. Packed with original research (never before, for example, has anyone bothered to consider how much wealth Myra Henshaw\u27s gold-stuffed kit gloves contain or to examine where Cather\u27s name appears in advertising for the 1934 film version of A Lost Lady), the volume achieves both goals. Cather specialists and scholars interested in the American literary marketplace will find Willa Cather and Material Culture absorbing and rewarding