Conrad Richter
Conrad Richter | |
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The Town, The Awakening Land | |
Spouse | Harvena Achenbach (died 1972) |
Children | 1 |
Conrad Michael Richter (October 13, 1890 – October 30, 1968) was an American novelist whose lyrical work is concerned largely with life on the American frontier in various periods. His novel
Early life
Conrad Michael Richter was born in 1890 in
Early career, marriage and move to New Mexico
At the age of 19, Richter started working as an editor of a local weekly newspaper, the
Richter continued writing and trying to sell short stories. This short story was re-issued as the title story of a posthumous collection published in 1973.
In 1928 Richter relocated to
Writing career
During the early 1930s, Richter had numerous stories published in
He persisted with his work, gradually writing and publishing full-length novels. Richter set his novels in different periods of American history on its changing frontier. He may be best known for The Sea of Grass (1936), set in late nineteenth-century New Mexico, and featuring conflict between ranchers and farmers. It was later adapted as a movie of the same name, directed by Elia Kazan and featuring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, released in 1947.
Richter's novel
He simply tells how he thinks things were for both Indians and whites, in a hard time of violence and danger and change on a raw frontier. And does it so convincingly that the reader senses that this indeed, is how it must have been.[4]
During this period, Richter also published the novels of his trilogy
the three books are not only concerned with Sayward and her family but the growth and the astonishingly rapid development of a whole area which has played a key role in the nation's history… Mr. Richter has reproduced the quality and the speech of these people so well that a thousand years from now, one may read his books and know exactly what these people were like and what it was like to have lived in an era when within three or four generations a frontier wilderness turned into one of the great industrial areas of the earth…. 'The Town' stands on its own as an entity and may be read on its own as a full, rich and comprehensive novel based upon the lives of ordinary people, brave and ever heroic in their own small way...[4]
The trilogy was first published in one volume in 1966 by Alfred A. Knopf. It was adapted as a TV miniseries of the same name in 1978, in which several plot changes were made as a result of the changing social culture of the time, especially concerning race and sexuality.
Richter's short story, "Doctor Hanray's Second Chance", first published in the magazine The Saturday Evening Post in 1950 (June 10),[11] has a theme of reconciling with the past. Richter returned to this theme in his 1960 autobiographical novel, The Waters of Kronos (Chronos). (Chronos was the ancient Greek personification of Time.) This novel won the U.S. National Book Award in 1961.[2]
The short story "Doctor Hanray" was republished in the anthology, The Saturday Evening Post Fantasy Stories (1951) and in several later
After Richter's death, two short story collections were published posthumously. Additionally, several of his novels have been reissued by academic presses. When The Waters of Kronos was reissued in paperback format in 2003, one reviewer wrote,
To celebrate the reappearance of such a worthy novel may be an expression of regional patriotism, but it should also be an opportunity to think about our own small towns, our own haunted memories, and our own quest for the meaning of the past.
— Jeffrey S. Wood, Cumberland County History[8]
Bibliography
- Early Americana (short stories) (1936)
- The Sea of Grass (1936)
- The Trees (1940)
- Tacey Cromwell (1942)
- The Free Man (1943)
- The Fields (1946)
- Always Young and Fair (1947)
- The Town(1950)
- The Light in the Forest (1953)
- The Mountain on the Desert (1955)
- The Lady (1957)
- The Waters of Kronos (1960/2003)
- A Simple Honorable Man (1962)
- The Grandfathers (1964)
- A Country of Strangers (1966)
- The Awakening Land (trilogy in single volume, 1966/1991 revised paperback edition/2017 trade paperback editions reprinted from original Knopf editions)
- The Aristocrat (1968)
- Brothers of No Kin and Other Stories (posthumous short story collection, 1973)
- The Rawhide Knot and Other Stories (posthumous short story collection, 1985)
The Sea of Grass, The Trees and Tacey Cromwell were published as
Legacy and honors
Richter received national and regional literary awards, and several honorary doctorates.
- 1937 – National Book Award nomination for The Sea of Grass.
- 1942 – Gold Medal for Literature from Society of Libraries of New York University, for The Sea of Grass and The Trees.
- 1947 – Ohioana Library Medal for The Fields.
- 1951 – The Town.
- 1959 – National Institute of Arts and Letters grant for literature.
- 1959 – Maggie Award for The Lady.
- 1961 – National Book Award for The Waters of Kronos.
- 1944 – Litt.D., Susquehanna University.
- 1958 – Litt.D., University of New Mexico.
- 1966 – Litt.D., Lafayette College.
- 1966 – LL.D., Temple University.
- 1966 – L.H.D., Lebanon Valley College.
- 1967 – Florence R. Head Memorial Award from the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Association.
References
- ^ a b "Fiction", Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
- ^ a b "National Book Awards – 1961". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-28. (With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
- ISBN 978-0-8041-5098-9. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
The author wishes to acknowledge his own Pennsylvania Dutch origins of mingled German, English, French, Scots-Irish and other blood that has been in America from 100 to 250 years.
- ^ a b c d e f Conrad Richter Archived 2017-02-01 at the Wayback Machine. Ohioana Authors
- ^ a b David R. Johnson, Conrad Richter Archived 2008-07-20 at the Wayback Machine, Penn State Press, 2001
- ^ Ravi D. Goel Collection of Frederic Taber Cooper. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
- ^ a b Edward J. O'Brien (editor), "Introduction", Best Short Stories of 1915, Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1915, e-text online at Gutenberg Project
- ^ a b c Overview, Paperback version of The Waters of Kronos, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003 Archived 2014-05-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Conrad Richter (American Society of Authors and Writers)
- ^ Conrad Richter author spotlight(Random House, Inc.)
- ^ a b c Conrad Richter at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-11-19.
External links
- Conrad Richter and the Minsker Stories
- Early Americana: A Conrad Richter Tribute Page
- Conrad Richter at Library of Congress, with 46 library catalog records
- Works by Conrad Richter at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)