Sellars's previous collaborations with Adams have included premiere productions of Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic (for which Sellars also wrote the libretto). According to Sellars, "These true stories of the Forty-Niners are overwhelming in their heroism, passion and cruelty, telling tales of racial conflicts, colorful and humorous exploits, political strife and struggles to build anew a life and to decide what it would mean to be American." Adams wrote, "To be able to set to music the authentic voices of these people, whether from their letters or their songs or from newspaper accounts from their time, is a great privilege for me." Sellars, who also directed the opera, conceived the libretto while doing research for a production of Giacomo Puccini's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West (based on David Belasco's 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West), which also deals with the gold rush period. The libretto is also sourced from other literature of the period, including newspaper articles and the writings of Mark Twain. Clappe published the letters under the pen name Dame Shirley. The Girls of the Golden West tells the tale of ninety-five-year-old John Quincy Adams the Second (no relation to the famous historic figure), who meets a graduate student named Annie Baxter and agrees to help her write a history of the culture of the South by sharing his experiences through the decades. Immediately after Cather, in terms of literary reputation, is Mary Austin, a supremely well-connected author in bicoastal literary circles and native Californian of whom it was said, alternately, that she was a genius.The opera is inspired by the 1851/1852 letters of Louise Clappe, who lived for a year and a half in the mining settlement of Rich Bar (now Diamondville, California) during the California Gold Rush. The best known of Brosman’s subjects is, of course, Willa Cather, two of whose novels- My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop-are classics of 20th-century American literature, while a third, the semiautobiographical Song of the Lark, though not so well known, presses to be another. (Admittedly, several of these women were, to one degree or another, feminists, as was that great writer of the Nebraska plains, Mari Sandoz, best known as the author of Old Jules, whose merged affinity with her native Sandhill country in the northwest part of the state and its indigenous people, the Sioux, is comparable to that of her Southwestern sisters considered here.) Both versions are highlighted for Rue’s lines. Van Dyke, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Joseph Wood Krutch, Zane Grey, Edward Abbey, Charles Bowden-with their feminine ones. Although there is some original material in the two drafts of the 13-paged script, the true Golden Girls fan will recognize some lines from popular episodes. Catharine Savage Brosman’s emphasis is not on the ideological but rather on the intellectual and artistic identity of her subjects, which complement the masculine sensibilities of their male counterparts-Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Tom Lea, John S. The exhibit, which is named for a 1905 play by David Belasco called The Girl of the Golden West,' is not large. Prospective readers should not be put off by the words “women writers” in the title of this book. Girls of the Golden West is a way to bring things out of the vault that havent been seen in quite a while, and theres tremendous variety.' Centennial celebration.