The Troll Garden

The Troll Garden (1905) was Willa Cather's first collection of short stories, published by McClure, Phillips & Co. The title alludes to Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market," and the seven stories explore the tension between art and the provincial world, between the sensitive soul and the materialistic society that surrounds it. Several of these stories had appeared individually in magazines like Scribner's and The New England Magazine before Cather gathered them together.

"We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"

Stories in This Collection

• Flavia and Her Artists — A society hostess collects artists the way others collect art, until one guest reveals the truth about her patron's pretensions.
• The Sculptor's Funeral — When a famous sculptor's body is returned to his Kansas hometown, the mourners reveal more about themselves than about the man they failed to understand.
• The Garden Lodge — A practical, composed woman unexpectedly finds herself shattered by the memory of a visiting musician who rehearsed in her garden lodge.
• A Death in the Desert — A dying singer in a remote Wyoming town is visited by the brother of the great composer she once loved.
• The Marriage of Phaedra — An American art collector pursues the masterwork of a dead English painter, entangling himself in the painter's bitter domestic legacy.
• A Wagner Matinee — A young man takes his aging aunt, who gave up a life of music to homestead in Nebraska, to a Wagner concert in Boston.
• Paul's Case — Cather's most famous story: a sensitive, restless Pittsburgh boy steals money and escapes to New York to live, for a few glorious days, the life he believes he deserves.