Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather – Willa Cather described the result of her bold experimentation into advancing the art of the novel in Death Comes for the Archbishop as ‘altogether a new kind of thing.’ Reviewers, critics, scholars, and academicians have described the work in a multiplicity of terms: chronicle, character study, intimate epic, regional historical fiction, and even, in the lyrical language of one writer, ‘an interplay of environment and character.’ Such a distinctively idiosyncratic and successful endeavor was Death Comes for the Archbishop in the eyes of its creator that it moved Willa Cather—arguably one of the five best writers in America at any time during her long career—to request an increase in her standard royalty payment by one percent.
Death Comes for the Archbishop is the story of the life of Archbishop Jean Marie Latour, a French missionary. He is given the task of overseeing the diocese of New Mexico, which has just been annexed by the United States from Mexico. His flock are Mexicans who are now displaced from their country, Native Americans who are still fighting to keep their land, and Americans settling the area. The year is 1851. Latour travels to New Mexico with his friend, Father Joseph Vaillant. They travel from their mission in Sandusky, Ohio to Santa Fe. The trip takes them a year.
When they finally reach Santa Fe, the resident Mexican priests will not accept Latour’s authority, and so Latour must travel to Mexico for the proper papers from the Bishop of Durango. While he is gone, Father Joseph ingratiates himself within the community. When Father Latour returns, he finds the people willing to accept him. The diocese that Father Latour has is huge in scope, and there are many priests under his authority. There are also many settlements that do not have resident priests. He must travel to attend to his people and convert the natives. His time is largely spent traveling.
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Wilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, ‘One of Ours’ (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author’s total accomplishments.
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