Those reading the 1923 novella A Lost Lady for the first time will likely find much of it familiar. Like Willa Cather’s best-known works, My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, A Lost Lady is the story of the American West, the dreams and foibles of Euro-American pioneers. But some readers may find the title character, Mrs. Marian Forrester, and her relationship to main character Niel Herbert familiar as well. By his own admission, the novel inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, primarily in its portrayal of Daisy Buchannan. In fact, Fitzgerald wrote to Cather after the publication of his novel, apologizing for any plagiarizing he may have done.
But beyond those similarities, readers...
