“The Sentimentality of William Tavener” is our last story of the year for the Willa Cather Short Story Project. It was published in The Library on May 12, 1900.
Read it over on the Willa Cather Archive: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss039.
“The Sentimentality of William Tavener” was Cather’s second story published in The Library, but it was the first using her own name. You may recall that last month’s story, “The Dance at Chavalier’s,” was published in The Library under the pseudonym Henry Nicklemann. Why the change? Is it something about the stories themselves?
The Willa Cather Archive has some cool features. It’s been a while since I reminded readers that you can see what a story looked like when it was published. Go to the story and look for the button on the upper right corner that says “page breaks & image links.” Click that and a thumbnail image will appear. Click the thumbnail to see a larger view of the image. These are not always readable, but it’s pretty neat to see how a story looked upon its entrance into the literary world.
The illustration below accompanies “The Sentimentality of William Tavener.” I didn’t see an artist’s name to give credit.
What’s next?
Read “The Sentimentality of William Tavener” sometime this month and come back to discuss it on the response post I’ll share on December 28th, the fourth Wednesday of the month. Or, feel free to read it now and comment here if you can’t wait until then!
New to this blog? Learn more about the Willa Cather Short Story Project here. In a nutshell, we read one Cather short story a month. I remind everyone of what story we’re reading on the second Wednesday of the month and then share a response on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Jump in anytime!