This collection offers a representative collection of Cather's nonfiction writing for newspapers and periodicals during her first decade as a professional writer. The text is divided into three parts corresponding to major developments in Cather's career: the period from 1893 to 1896 when she first began to write regularly for Lincoln newspapers; the years in Pittsburgh when she was working for the Home Monthly and the Leader and sending her famous "Passing Show" column back to Nebraska; and the period from the spring of 1900 to 1903, when she freelanced in Pittsburgh and Washington, taught in a Pittsburgh high school, and made her first trip abroad.