SOURCE: Arnold, Marilyn. “Refining the Gift: 1901–1905.” In Willa Cather's Short Fiction, pp. 37–67. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984.

In the following essay, Arnold offers a thematic overview of the stories in The Troll Garden.

I. a Time of Transition

Cather left the Leader sometime during the spring of 1900 and went to visit her cousins in Washington, D.C. There she did some editing work before returning to Pittsburgh. In March 1901, she accepted a position teaching English and Latin at Pittsburgh's Central High School then later moved to Allegheny High School. By the time Willa Cather began teaching in Pittsburgh she had written more than many writers produce in a lifetime. It is estimated that by then, in addition to numerous short stories, poems, and an unpublished volume of drama criticism, Cather had written “more than five hundred columns, articles, reviews, and feature stories.”¹ It was during Cather's teaching years that...