“... consider the place of Wagnerian themes in the work of early 20th-century women writers, among them Willa Cather (devotee of Wagner soprano Olive Fremstad). With its exploration of celibacy, guilt, castration and androgyny, the psychiatrist Oskar Panizza called Parsifal ‘spiritual nourishment for pederasts’, inciting furious rebuttals. Panizza was ...”

“... American writing, from Cooper to Emerson, from Twain to Whitman, and Henry James, from Dreiser to Willa Cather and on to Mailer. Lawrence’s two Englishwomen, Lou Witt and her acerbic mother, are to be found at the end of the story in the deserts of New Mexico, where the younger woman, like the New England woman who occupied the ranch before ...”

“... Petite Plaisance. The island is the site of Acadia National Park, and is, coincidentally, where Willa Cather also came to summer with her partner, Edith Lewis. Yourcenar and Frick’s white clapboard house with black shutters was surrounded by trees and filled with old things, such as Delft tiles and Indonesian tapestry, as well as hundreds of books ...”

“... degree.’ If you say so, Lorenzo – she was 63 at the time. Ordinarily cool and spinsterish, Willa Cather lights up like a Christmas tree in the Divine One’s presence: Bernhardt’s ‘bursts of passion blind one by their vividness … It is like lightning, gone before you see enough of it, and indescribable in its brilliancy.’ The actress’s ...”

“... indeed, the whole Stieglitz-O’Keeffe-D.H. Lawrence-Mabel Dodge Luhan-Willa Cather-Pueblo-Cliff-Dwellers-Death-Comes-for-the-Archbishop thing. Maybe we’ll even see Julia Roberts. (The sun-dried actress – a fortysomething Roma tomato in disguise? – has a ranch near Taos.) Our hotel is right on the plaza and has the ...”