Alexander's Bridge

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013 M01 16 - 144 pages
Alexander’s Bridge, Willa Cather’s first novel, is a taut psychological drama about the fragility of human connections.

Published in 1912, just a year before O Pioneers! made Cather’s name, it features high society on an international stage rather than the immigrant prairie characters she later became known for. The successful and glamorous life of Bartley Alexander, a world-renowned engineer and bridge builder, begins to unravel when he encounters a former lover in London. As he shuttles among his wife in Boston, his old flame in London, and a massive bridge he is building in Canada, Alexander finds himself increasingly tormented. But the threatened collapse of his marriage presages a more fatal catastrophe, one he will risk his life to try to prevent.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
10
Section 3
18
Section 4
20
Section 5
21
Section 6
28
Section 7
29
Section 8
30
Section 23
82
Section 24
87
Section 25
89
Section 26
90
Section 27
92
Section 28
93
Section 29
94
Section 30
96

Section 9
31
Section 10
35
Section 11
40
Section 12
45
Section 13
47
Section 14
57
Section 15
62
Section 16
65
Section 17
68
Section 18
72
Section 19
73
Section 20
78
Section 21
80
Section 22
81
Section 31
97
Section 32
98
Section 33
104
Section 34
105
Section 35
106
Section 36
107
Section 37
113
Section 38
114
Section 39
115
Section 40
118
Section 41
122
Section 42
123
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Alexander's Bridge
Willa Cather
Limited preview - 2012
Alexander's Bridge
Willa Cather
Limited preview - 2004
Alexander's Bridge
Willa Cather
Limited preview - 1977
View all »

Common terms and phrases

afraid afternoon Alexander rose Alexander sat Allway asked azaleas Bartley looked Bedford Square began believe boys British Museum brought carriage chair coat color Covent Garden dark dear dinner door dress Embankment everything eyes face feel felt fire flushed front Galway glad gloves gray hair hand hansom happy head heard Hilda Burgoyne Hilda laughed Horton hour hurried jolly knew Lady leaned forward light live London Luxembourg MacConnell MacConnell's Mainhall Miss Burgoyne Moorlock Bridge morning mummy never night Oxford Street remember river rose seemed shoulders Sir Harry Towne smiled sometimes spoke stood stopped Street talk tell theatre things thought tired to-night told took turned Twickenham upstairs watched Westmere whispered White River Junction wife Willa Cather Wilson window Winifred woman wonder write young youth

About the author (2013)

Willa Cather was born near Winchester, Virginia, in 1873. When she was ten years old, her family moved to the prairies of Nebraska, later the setting for a number of her novels. At the age of twenty-one, she graduated from the University of Nebraska, and she spent the next few years doing newspaper work and teaching high school in Pittsburgh. In 1903, her first book, April Twilights, a collection of poems, was published, and two years later The Troll Garden, a collection of stories, appeared in print. After the publication of her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, in 1912, Cather devoted herself full time to writing, and over the years she completed eleven more novels (including O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop), four collections of short stories, and two volumes of essays. Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1923. She died in 1947.

Bibliographic information

TitleAlexander's Bridge
Vintage Classics
AuthorWilla Cather
Editionunabridged
PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013
ISBN0307831965, 9780307831965
Length144 pages
  
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