WILLA CATHER LIVING

Here are the ""notes"" supplied E.K. Brown for his ""critical biography"" and considerably enlivened by the personal touches that give the reader ""Willa Cather Living"". Emphatic provision was made in her will prohibiting the use of her letters for biographical purposes. That prohibition has inevitably hampered anyone approaching biographical studies, but Miss Lewis compensates, in so far as possible, by tapping the rich vein of her close companionship. One feels that Willa Cather comes through these pages as a person, in what she was like, how she looked, her human contacts, her responses to what life brought her. Inevitably personal in the viewpoint, this is nonetheless a sincere and devoted effort to give the reader a portrait of the woman, the writer, the friend. It is unfortunate that- in reading the two books consecutively, the very wording of the texts is identical, almost wherever E.K. Brown uses Miss Lewis' material.