A Lost Lady

2020 Reprint of the 1923 Edition. "Written from the perspective of a male narrator, Willa Cather's classic novel is an American version of Madame Bovary. It is a portrait of a talented woman trapped in the conventions and economic restraints of a marriage. It is the story of a woman who defies expectations, and whose personal changes coincide with the transforming American Frontier. In this work, Willa Cather expressed her profoundly modern feminist views in the life of an ordinary and gifted woman who is stifled by marriage."--Ingram. A Lost Lady (1923) is a shining example of Willa Cather's gift for concise expression and talent for vivid character studies. Marian Forrester, a young woman of beauty and grace, brings an uncommon air of sophistication to the frontier town of Sweet Water. Marian wound up in Sweet Water, which lay along the Transcontinental Railroad, through her marriage to the much older Captain Daniel Forrester. The novel is written from the viewpoint of Niel Herbert, a young man who has grown up in Sweet Water. He idealizes Mrs. Forrester, even as he witnesses her decline. As a contemporary edition of A Lost Lady concludes, "The recurrent conflict in Cather's work, between frontier culture and an encroaching commercialism, is nowhere more powerfully articulated." A Lost Lady came out on the heels of One of Ours (1922), which, even though it disappointed critics for the most part, nevertheless won the Pulitzer Prize."-Literary Ladies Guide