Willa Cather authored twelve novels and numerous short stories over the course of her career. Her most famous novels include her "Prairie Trilogy," O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia (1918), and her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Cather counted the novelist Henry James as a major influence, whose most famous work is The Portrait of a Lady (1881).
Other famous Midwestern/Prairie novels in American literature include Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.