Conrad Richter

Conrad Michael Richter (October 13, 1890 – October 30, 1968) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist whose lyrical work focuses on life along the American frontier.

Biography

Born in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, Conrad Richter was the son, grandson, nephew, and great-nephew of Lutheran clergy-men. He grew up in several central Pennsylvania towns, where he came into contact with any number of pioneer descendants. Their stories became the basis of much of Richter's work. He took a job as editor of a local weekly newspaper, the Patton Pennsylvania Courier, when he was nineteen. In 1911 he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and became the private secretary to a wealthy manufacturing family. He subsequently founded a juvenile magazine before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for his wife's health, in 1928.^[1]

In the early '30s, he had numerous stories published in pulp magazines like Triple-X, Short Stories, Complete Stories, Ghost Stories, and Blue Book.^[2][3] Probably best known for The Sea of Grass and The Light in the Forest, both were later turned into films. The Town, the third installment of his The Awakening Land trilogy, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1951. His story, 'Doctor Hanray's Second Chance,' first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1950, was republished in the anthology, The Saturday Evening Post Fantasy Stories (1951) and in subsequent anthologies of fantasy and science fiction published by the Post.^[4] 'Doctor Hanray' contains a recurrent theme of reconciling with the past that is evident in the most autobiographical of Richter's novels, The National Book Award-winner, The Waters of Kronos (1960).

Bibliography

• The Sea of Grass (1937)
• The Awakening Land Trilogy
  • The Trees (1940)
  • The Fields (1946)
  • The Town (1950)
• The Light in the Forest (1953)
• The Lady (1957)
• A Company of Strangers
• The Free Man
• The Waters of Kronos (1960)

References

1. ^ Conrad Richter (by David R. Johnson. The Penn State Press) [1]
2. ^ Conrad Richter (American Society of Authors and Writers)[2]
3. ^ Conrad Richter author spotlight(Random House, Inc.) [3]
4. ^ http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?97381

External links

• Conrad Richter And the Minsker Stories
• Books by Conrad Richter

Persondata
Name	Richter
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 13, 1890
Place of birth
Date of death	October 30, 1968
Place of death