Although the land on which the Nebraska farm boy Claude Wheeler lives is settled, he himself has inherited the pioneer spirit of adventure, the frontiersman's purpose, and the settler's sense of idealism. In One of Ours, Willa Cather explores the dissonance between Claude’s attitudes and his physical reality and studies how this conflict affects him. Drawing on her own family’s experience of the war through her cousin G. P. Cather, who fought in World War I, Cather observes how an otherwise misdirected young man could find purpose and meaning in war and how his death would affect his family’s memories of him. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, One of Ours paints Claude as a young man who seeks an escape from a conventional and unfulfilling life through the realization of “something splendid” in his military experience in Europe.

 

This Willa Cather Scholarly Edition puts One of Ours in a new and revealing context. The novel is edited according to standards set by the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association and presents the full range of biographical, historical, and textual information on the novel.

Richard C. Harris is a professor and the director of humanities at the Webb Institute in Glen Cove, New York. Frederick M. Link is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the textual editor of Cather’s Obscure Destinies, The Professor’s House, and Shadows on the Rock. Kari A. Ronning is an assistant editor for the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.