Willa Cather said that O Pioneers was her first authentic novel, the first time I walked off on my own feet everything before was half real and half an imitation of writers whom I admired. Cather s novel of life on the Nebraska frontier established her reputation as a writer of great note and marked a significant turningpoint in her artistic development. No longer would she let literary convention guide the form of her writing; the materials themselves would dictate the structure.

The paperback edition contains all the text and scholarly apparatus found in the original Willa Cather...