The Professor's House

Originally published in 1925, ‘The Professor's House’ is the profound study of a middle-aged man’s unhappiness by Willa Cather, an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia.
The novel tells the story of its central character, Professor Godfrey St. Peter, in three parts. In the first part, the Professor feels that he is losing control over his life and resists the direction it is taking. He is displeased with his family’s move to a new house, with his daughters being grown and married, and with the death of Tom Outland in the First World War, who was a beloved student and the fiancé of his oldest daughter.
In the second part, the Professor recalls the first-person account of Tom and his explorations in New Mexico. Tom’s goodness and love of nature are a sharp contrast to the materialism and superficiality of the Professor’s new son-in-law and his death has been a great loss to the family. The third section finds the Professor alone, despondent, and losing his will to live while secluded in his old study as the rest of his family is off on vacation. It is a moving and deeply impactful study of fear, mortality, and one man’s struggle to find meaning in his changing life.

Wilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.