"Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle" in The Nation
Artist: Cather, Willa 1873-1947
Maker: The Nation
Object Date: 1923
Full Collection: Betty Kort Collection
Credit Line: TX-50-1000-57. Betty Kort Collection. Willa Cather Foundation Special Collections & Archives at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud.
Context:
Willa Cather, 1923. "Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle" was published in the September 5, 1923, issue of The Nation. In a letter to Omaha judge Duncan Vinsonhaler, Cather called this essay "a labor of love." In it, she describes the cycles of settlement of the state, echoing portions of her novel A Lost Lady, also published in 1923. The essay was part of a series entitled "These United States" published by The Nation between 1922 and 1925; forty-eight American authors, including Cather, H.L. Mencken, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and W.E.B. DuBois, wrote about their home states for the series. These were later republished as a book with photographs.