Willa Cather in Europe: Her Own Story of the First Journey

“Not often are we given an opportunity to observe a great American writer arrive for the first time in the Old World from the New, there to record first impressions spontaneously, as they came, subject to no second thoughts, no later, leveling revision,” George N. Kates writes in his Introduction to Willa Cather in Europe.         “The fourteen travel articles that form the present volume, written by Willa Cather on a first journey to England and France, give as just such a record . . . 1902 was the Edwardian year when Willa Cather, with her friend Isabelle McClung, proceeded on this journey. We can follow them as they go, from Liverpool to Chester and Shrewsbury, to Ludlow and the quiet Shropshire country; onward into the dim vastness of London . . . then further across the Channel to the other skies, to Rouen, Paris, and the Midi.”         Mr. Kates has supplied an interpretive Introduction and “Incidental Notes.”