This edition includes the following editor's introduction: Willa Cather, an analysis of the literature of a free and empowered woman

First published in 1920, "Youth and the Bright Medusa" is a collection of eight of the stories that the American author Willa Cather had written over the past twenty years, stories of the perilous pursuit of the bright medusa of art in a hostile, materialistic world; in short, stories about artists and the art.
"Youth and the Bright Medusa" includes some of Cather's best tales: "Coming, Aphrodite!" focuses on a dedicated painter and his affair with a singer in pursuit of celebrity; "Paul's Case" and "A Wagner Matinée" tell of a young man and an old woman with artistic longings crushed by their environments; "The Sculptor's Funeral" and "The Diamond Mine" show the high costs of success.
Four of the stories in the collection were reprinted from Cather's first published collection of fiction, "The Troll Garden" (1905).