Exploring the intersection of personal and public authorial voice in the works of Willa Cather

This research began in a class taught by Matthew Jockers and has continued under his direction as a project of the newly formed Nebraska Literary Lab. Our work focused on mining the fiction and non-fiction works of Willa Cather that are housed in the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Jewell, Andrew. The Willa Cather Archive. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004-2013. Web). Largely regarded as a private person, Cather forbade the publication of her correspondence; only recently have her letters finally been published. With the publication of these letters comes the unique opportunity for scholars to research Cather's personal thoughts and voice. Our research focused on using stylometrics to explore the ways in which the voice Cather used in her correspondence differs from the voice she used in her public writing; our conclusions point to similarities between Cather's novel My Mortal Enemy, a work noted for both its economy of style and autobiographical features, and her recently published letters.