Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873[1] – April 24, 1947) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the state university; she lived in New York for most of her adult life and writing career

Willa Cather's A Lost Lady was first published in 1923. It tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester who live in the Western town of Sweet Water, along the Transcontinental Railroad.

Plot summaryThe novel is written in the third person, but is mostly written from the perspective of Niel Herbert, a young man who grows up in Sweet Water and witnesses the decline of Mrs. Forrester, for whom he feels very deeply, and also of the West itself from the idealized age of noble pioneers to the age of capitalist exploitation

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Film poster of A Lost Lady (1934)Main article: A Lost Lady (film)

The novel was adapted very loosely into a film in 1934 by Gene Markey, and starred Barbara Stanwyck as Marian Forrester. The film did not live up to the novel's reputation and is generally regarded as mediocre.