My Antonia

Publication history

The novel was shaped by the contribution of Viola Roseboro', Cather's editor at McClure's Magazine, who read the original manuscript after it had been repeatedly rejected, and told Cather that she should rewrite it from Jim's viewpoint.[12]

The 1918 version of My Antonia begins with an Introduction in which an author-narrator, supposed to be Cather herself, converses with her adult friend, Jim Burden, during a train journey. Jim is now a successful New York lawyer but trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage to a wealthy, activist woman.[13]: 15  Cather agreed with her publisher at Houghton Mifflin to cut that introduction when a revised edition of the novel was published in 1926.[13]: 14  A brief introduction with Jim taking that train ride, speaking with an unnamed woman who also knew Ántonia about writing about her, is included in the version at Project Gutenberg.[14]


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