Summary
The story of Marian Forrester, a wife and then a widow in a small Nebraska town, and Niel Herbert, the narrator, who has been devoted to her since he was a child, is one of Cather's lesser-known novels, but considered by many to be one of her best. Marian is a refined and civilizing presence in the rough town to which her marriage to a rich man takes her, but after a devastating love affair, followed by her husband's death and the loss of her money, she makes changes in her life that, at first, Niel fails to understand. It's only years later that he is able to see that her life was, in fact, a work of art with its own logic-that the woman he revered but considered "lost" was in fact the mistress of her fate, and a woman he can continue to admire.
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Media Reviews
"The book stands, from the point of view of art, as her most notable performance up to the present. It is all but faultless in structure; it possesses evident beauty of design and proportion...At her best she has created characters of distinction and significance..." -- Lloyd Morris
-- North American Review
"...a charming sketch performed with exceptional skill. Willa Cather is...one of the only writers who has been able to bring any real distinction to the life of the Middle West." -- Edmund Wilson
"She has had the strength to give herself to her natural environment, and in 'A Lost Lady' she has actually succeeded in transforming her material into the universal forms of art-no easy conquest." -- T.K. Whipple
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Kessinger Pub
Published date: 2005
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Weight: 0.65 pounds
Pages: 176
Other Editions
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