Conrad Michael Richter - (1890-1968)
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I. Biography
Conrad Michael Richter was born in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania on October 13, 1890. He was an only child. Richter was the son of ministers, and his life, therefore, was very religious. He lived in many
towns across the state of Pennsylvania, living mostly in the famous Clark's Valley. Not much is know about his parents except for the fact that his father served as a minister in the Church of Clark's Valley. Richter's grandfather was a store squire, and owned a tavern. He fought as a major in the War of 1812 and is related to Henry Richter, a general who served with George Washington for some time.
Richter's education was limited to two years in a preparatory school and the time needed to finish high school. He finished high school when he was fifteen and proceeded to go to work as a light wagon driver in the Schuylkill County Mountains. He had many other jobs, such as in a machine shop, as a coal breaker, and in a small town bank. Richter had his own timber company, which he sold for a small price. Thereafter, Richter became a correspondent for the Philadelphia dailies, and then became a reporter for Johnstown and Pittsburgh papers, investigating a silver-lead mine in the Coeur d'Alenes. Richter was a private secretary for two years and then he finally settled down to become a small publisher and to write in earnest.
From his early childhood, Richter had been interested in early American life and his work was strongly influenced by the pioneer spirit. Most of his work reflects his passion for the woods, mountains and countryside, as well as the stories and tales surrounding the settlement, and colonization of the
United States. One of Richter's main influences was the famous John Minsker of Clark Valley. Richter spent much of his time as a lad listening to the stories that John filled his head with; as such became the basis for most of Richter's work. According to the Minsker legend, one of Richter's characters in The Grandfathers is based on John Minsker himself. However, this was not Richter's only source of information. He was a tireless research worker, searching out old diaries, account books, and newspapers, and spending hours talking to old-timers who could supply details heard from their families and descendants. Richter died at the age of seventy-eight in 1968.
II. Literary Works
The Light in the Forest is about a boy (John Butler) who is captured by the Lenni Lenape tribe of Indians. He is a white boy, who grows up Indian and learns to think, act, and worship like those in the tribe. The Indians make a peace agreement with the white people and agree to return all of their white captives, including John, (who is called True Son by his adoptive father Cuyloga). The book is about family ties verses racial ties. Richter writes with passion and a certain pattern of violence, in with which he intertwines the pure issues of betrayal and loyalty, all the while in a setting of a fierce struggle over the ownership of the forest. Published in 1953, The Light in the Forest is considered by literary critics as Richter's best work.
The Sea of Grass is another well-known book by Conrad Richter. It is about a young woman who leaves the city to marry a wealthy man who lives on a farm. Although she wants to be happy, she isn't, for she yearns for the life that she hurried to leave. This confusion as to where her heart lies leads to her humiliation at the hands of her callous lover. In it, a writing style simple and clear presents the reader with an emotional and heartbreaking plot, brought to life by characters that almost seem too human. The story is told by the woman's husband's nephew. He views her with admiration, but also with a sense of pity. The story brings up the same conflicts between loyalties, as did The Light in the Forest.
III. Other Works
The Ohio trilogy is made up of three books, The Trees, The Fields, and The Town. In this trilogy, Richter weaves a rich tapestry of legend, folklore, and American dialect that captures like nothing else the experience of what life must have been like on the frontier in the late 1700's, Richter won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Town.
Complete list of works
Early Americana and Other Stories (1936)
The Sea of Grass (1937)
The Trees (1940)
Tracy Cromwell (1942)
Happy Land (1943)
The Free Man (1943)
The Fields (1946)
Always Young and Fair (1947)
The Town (1950)
The Light in the Forest (1953)
Debri (1953)
The Mountain on the Desert: A Philosophical Journal (1955)
The Lady (1957)
The Waters of Kronos (1960)
A Simple Honorable Man (1962
The Awakening Land (1966)
Over the Blue Mountain (1967)
The Aristocrat (1968)
Brothers of No Kin and Other Stories (1973)
The Rawhide Knot and Other Stories (1978)
Writing to Survive: The Private Notebooks of Conrad Richter (1988)
IV. Bibliography
Richter, Conrad. The Waters of Kronos. New York: Bantam Books, 1960
http://mansker.org/index.html?Richter.htmlThis essay was submitted by a student of Cheryl Petersohn, a teacher at Harriton High School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.