\u201cThey lived together for nearly 40 years, so it\u2019s hard to pretend she\u2019s not there,\u201d said Homestead, professor of English and director of the Cather Project. \u201cIt is easy to pretend that she\u2019s not what she was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholars have disagreed on, or tried to bury, the importance of Lewis in Cather\u2019s life. But Homestead\u2019s meticulous research of surviving manuscripts, letters and other personal documents in Nebraska\u2019s collections and elsewhere reveals that Lewis substantially reshaped Cather\u2019s prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Homestead also dispels the myth that Lewis and Cather were isolated and secretive. The women, in fact, shared fulfilling, supportive lives together, traveling and socializing widely. A Lincoln, Nebraska, native, Lewis became a successful magazine editor and advertising writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Only Wonderful Things<\/em> captures a wider shift in American society that has largely been forgotten or ignored. Although Cather and Lewis lived together openly in the first half of the 20th century, Cather died just as Cold War panic tied homosexuality to communism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Social tolerance turned to homophobia. And Lewis\u2019 role in Cather\u2019s life and literature was disclaimed, successfully erasing her for posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s some correspondence where you can see that homophobia operating \u2013 even if they don\u2019t name it \u2013 to discredit Edith Lewis in some pretty extraordinary ways after Cather\u2019s death,\u201d Homestead said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although she visited many places hunting original documents or retracing the women\u2019s lives, Homestead\u2019s most valuable resource was close to home. University Libraries\u2019 Archives and Special Collections contains the world\u2019s largest, most substantial collection of Cather-related material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWilla Cather would have become a novelist if she hadn\u2019t met Edith Lewis, but I don\u2019t think she would have written the same books,\u201d Homestead said. \u201cWhat would her style have looked like without Edith Lewis editing her?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather, renowned for her depictions of prairie life, died in 1947, her life partner of 38 years was reduced to an inconsequential footnote. Nebraska author Melissa Homestead restores Edith Lewis to her rightful place in Cather\u2019s life and literary legacy in her new book, The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative… Continue reading Cather and Lewis: Capturing a Creative Partnership<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[15,204,12,16,17,13,18,19,14],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-activity","tag-cather-project","tag-creative-activity","tag-edith-lewis","tag-english","tag-history","tag-melissa-homestead","tag-the-only-wonderful-things","tag-university-libraries","tag-willa-cather","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Cather-Book1-673x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n