Books with title Oh Pioneers!

O Pioneers! is a story of the immigrants who came to America to build new lives for themselves. Struggling against poverty, ignorance, drought, and storm, they came to love and understand the land, until it rewarded them with a richness exceeding all imaginings. The Bergsons are a family of strong-willed Swedish immigrants who have come to make a living on the great prairie. When the father, John, dies, worn out by disease and debt, his eldest daughter, Alexandra, becomes the head of the family. This is the story of her love affair with the land--an American Midwest that is vast and golden.

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them.

First published in 1913, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! is the first part of the author’s well-known Prairie Trilogy – a series of three books that have no characters or specific locations in common, the only feature that links the three stories together being the principal theme, the life of people on the Great Plains.The story starts in 1880 and it introduces the Bergsons, a family of emigrants from Sweden who have come to the region in Nebraska known as the Divide to farm a plot of land. The soil in the area is not really suitable for farming and when the head of the family dies and leaves the task of running to farm to his daughter, Alexandra, the young woman is faced with a dilemma: should she stay on the land and hope her efforts and her hard work will be rewarded, or sell the farm, like her neighbors, and hope for an easier livelihood? She makes the difficult decision eventually and she makes her choice when it comes to marrying the man she loves as well.O Pioneers! is a naturalist novel with lots of beautiful descriptions of landscapes, but the focus is on human relationships. The landscapes, the descriptions of the farming procedures are combined with psychological insight in a masterful way. The Midwest prairies, the hard life of the settlers in the region provide excellent circumstances for creating complex characters and it is not only the character of Alexandra that is multi-colored and detailed, but all the other characters as well, male and female alike. The two other parts in the trilogy are The Song of the Lark, published in 1915, and My Antonia,which came out in 1918 – if you loved this wonderful story, you will surely like Willa Cather’s other masterpieces as well.

The first of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales", "The Pioneers" tells the story of the elderly Natty Bumppo and his ongoing friendship with the Mohican, Chingachgook.Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes a biography of James Fenimore Cooper, theme discussions and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom and at home to further engage the reader in the story.The Classics Illustrated comic book series began in 1941 with its first issue, Alexandre Dumas’s "The Three Musketeers", and has since included over 200 classic tales released around the world. This new CCS Books edition is specifically tailored to engage and educate young readers with some of the greatest works ever written, while still thrilling older readers who have loving memories of this series of old.

“The world is round,” said somebody in ancient times to somebody else.“Not at all; it is flat-flat as a pancake,” replied somebody else to somebody; “and if you were to travel far enough you might get to the end of it and tumble over the edge, if so disposed.”Ever since the commencement of this early geographical controversy, men have been labouring with more or less energy and success to ascertain the form and character of the earth; a grand, glorious labour it has been; resulting in blessings innumerable to mankind-blessings both spiritual and temporal.We have heard some people object to geographical discovery, especially in the inclement parts of the earth, on the ground that it could be of no use, and involved great risk to life and limb. “Of no use!” Who can tell what discoveries shall be useful and what useless? “The works of God are great, sought out of all those that have pleasure therein,” saith the Scripture. There is no reference here to usefulness, but the searching out of God’s works, without limitation, is authorised; and those who “take pleasure therein,” will be content to leave the result of their labours in the hands of Him who sent them forth. As to “risk,”-why, a carpenter cannot ascend to the top of a house to put the rafters thereon without risk; a chemist cannot investigate the properties of certain fumes without risk; you cannot even eat your dinner without risk. Only this are we sure of-that, if man had never undertaken labour except when such was obviously useful and devoid of risk, the world would still be in the darkness of the Middle Ages.Reuben Guff held these sentiments, or something like them; and Reuben was a man who had seen a great deal of life in his day, although at the time we introduce him to public notice he had not lived more than six-and-thirty summers. He was a bronzed, stalwart Canadian. His father had been Scotch, his mother of French extraction; and Reuben possessed the dogged resolution of the Scot with the vivacity of the Frenchman. In regard to his tastes and occupation we shall let him speak for himself.Sitting under a pine-tree, in the wild wilderness that lies to the north of Canada with the drumstick of a goose in one hand and a scalping-knife in the other; with a log-fire in front of him, and his son, a stripling of sixteen, by his side, he delivered himself of the following sentiments.R. M. Ballantyne (24 April 1825 – 8 February 1894) was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer.Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh, he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. At the age of 16 he went to Canada and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He returned to Scotland in 1847, and published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.(Illustrated)

With The Pioneers (1823), Cooper initiated his series of elegiac romances of frontier life and introduced the world to Natty Bumppo (or Leather-stocking). Set in 1793 in New York State, the novel depicts an aging Leather-stocking negotiating his way in a restlessly expanding society. In his introduction, Robert Daly argues for the novel’s increasing relevance: we live in a similarly complex society as Cooper’s frontier world, faced with the same questions about the limits of individualism, the need for voluntary cooperation, and stewardship of the environment. The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text of The Pioneers in the The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, published by the State University of New York Press.

At the turn of the twentieth century. When their father dies young, exhausted by the failure of his attempts at agriculture, it is left to the visionary Alexandra to guide the family to prosperity and safeguard the fortune of her brothers. Strong-willed and fiercely independent, she succeeds against all odds, but only at the cost of her own fulfilment as a woman. Central to the novel's action is the Nebraskan landscape it describes, by turns unyielding and fruitful, bitter and ecstatic.O Pioneers! joins Cather's My Antonia in Everyman's Library.

First published in 1823, “The Pioneers” was the debut novel in James Fenimore Cooper’s famous “Leatherstocking Tales”. While published first, it is the fourth chronologically of Cooper’s five “Leatherstocking Tales” and follows the later life of his central character, Natty Bumppo. Well-known to Cooper’s readers as the archetypal American frontiersman and friend to Indians, Natty struggles with hunting and maintaining his way of life amid a growing economy and the new societal laws that restrict the freedom of the wilderness he has always known. He finds allies of his rebellion in a local landowner’s daughter and a mysterious young visitor in this rich and fascinating depiction of early frontier life and the essential American character that clashes with the expanding nature of society. Natty is the wise and pragmatic voice of reason in the novel, a man who understands that the settlers must respect the land they now find themselves the stewards of if they want to continue to enjoy its beauty and resources. “The Pioneers” is both a rich social drama, as well as a political and ecological novel, that helped established Cooper as one of the first great American novelists. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.