By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Wagner Matinée’ is a short story by the American writer Willa Cather, first published in Everybody’s Magazine in 1904 before being collected in Cather’s collection The Troll Garden the following year. In just a few pages, Cather sketches out a wasted life where a woman, who left Boston to go and live on a remote farm, experiences the music of Wagner for the first time when she returns to the city, and realises how much she has missed out on.