“In great misfortunes … people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love—if once one has ever fallen in.”
—So says Godfrey St. Peter, the protagonist of Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, published a century ago. The 1925 novel, often overlooked by critics in the past, has nevertheless had many passionate champions, including the late A. S. Byatt. In an essay for The Guardian published in 2006, Byatt wrote, “I sometimes think The Professor’s House is Cather’s masterpiece. It is almost perfectly constructed, peculiarly moving, and completely original. … No one has written better about the pull of solitude. Most novels are about human relations. This one is about the desire to be released from them.”
