Youth and the Bright Medusa

In 1920 Willa Cather collected eight of the stories she had written over the past twenty years intoYouth and the Bright Medusa, stories of the perilous pursuit of the bright medusa of art in a hostile, materialistic world. These include some of her best tales: "Coming, Aphrodite!" focuses on a dedicated painter and his affair with a singer in pursuit of celebrity; "Paul's Case" and "A Wagner Matinee" tell of a young man and an old woman with artistic longings crushed by their environments; "The Sculptor's Funeral" and "The Diamond Mine" show the high costs of success. The historical essay and explanatory notes trace the composition of the stories and their roots in the people, events, and places Cather knew, from her family to world-famous sopranos, from Nebraska and Wyoming to New York and Pittsburgh, with new information on the sources for "Paul's Case." Historical photographs, including a hitherto unknown portrait of the prototype for Paul, show people and places as Cather knew them. The textual essay and apparatus show the versions that appeared in her lifetime, from first magazine publication to the final collected edition of her worksand explore how the magazine version of "Coming, Aphrodite!" had been censored by the editors, even to the title.

Mark J. Madigan is a professor of English at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. He is the author of many articles on Willa Cather and the editor of three volumes by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  Frederick M. Link and Charles W. Mignon are both professors emeritus of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and textual editors of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series.  Kari A. Ronning is a research associate professor of English, assistant editor of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series, and codirector of the Willa Cather Journalism project at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.