Paul Horgan

Paul Horgan (born Buffalo, New York, 1903 - died Middletown, Connecticut, 1995) was an American author of fiction and non-fiction, most of which was set in the Southwestern United States. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1903, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1915.

He later attended New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell where he formed a lifelong friendship with fellow classmate, later artist Peter Hurd.

He later served as the school's librarian for a number of years. He first came to prominence when he won the Harper Prize in 1933 for "The Fault of Angels", one of his books "not" set in the Southwest. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for History, first in 1955 with "Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History" and then once again in 1976 with "Lamy of Santa Fe". Both these books broke new ground in New Mexican history. "Great River" is considered a classic in the historical literature of the American southwest. It is especially noteworthy as the first attempt to describe, for a general audience, the pueblo culture of the Anasazi, as well as the colonial Spanish experience in New Mexico. Horgan's description of the Anglo-Americans who entered and eventually conquered Texas and New Mexico is also regarded as one of the most accurate narratives of southwestern history during this time period.

Horgan served as president of the ( [http://research.cua.edu/acha/default.cfm] ) American Catholic Historical Association, an association based at The Catholic University of America. In 1960 (see [http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A77] ) Robert Franklin Gish exalted Horgan's contributions in the monograph "Paul Horgan: Yankee Plainsman" and a few other works.

His later years were spent as a writer in residence at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he died in 1995.

Other works

Fiction

*"No Quarter Given"
*"The Habit of Empire"
*"A Lamp on the Plains"
*"Give Me Possession"
*"Memories of the Future"
*"The Return of the Weed"
*"Figures in a Landscape"
*"The Devil in the Desert"
*"One Red Rose for Christmas"
*"The Saintmaker's Christmas Eve"
*"Humble Powers"
*"Toby and the Nighttime"
*"The Peach Stone: Stories from Four Decades"
*"Main Line West", 1936
*"Far from Cibola", 1936
*"The Common Heart", 1942
*"A Distant Trumpet", 1951
*"Things as They Are", 1951
*"Everything to Live For", 1968
*"Whitewater"
*"The Thin Mountain Air", 1977

Nonfiction

*"Men of Arms"
*"From the Royal City"
*"New Mexico's Own Chronicle" (with Maurice Garland Fulton)
*"The Centuries of Santa Fe"
*"Rome Eternal"
*"Citizen of New Salem", 1961
*"Conquistadors in North American History"
*"Peter Hurd: A Portrait Sketch from Life"
*"Songs After Lincoln"
*"The Heroic Triad", 1954
*"Approaches to Writing"
*"Encounters with Stravinsky / A Personal Record"

External links

* [http://www.nndb.com/people/333/000048189/ NNDB entry]
* [http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0824184.html Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia entry]
* [http://www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/pdf/wl0574.pdf excerpt from "A Literary History of the American West"] by Robert Franklin Gish
* [http://research.cua.edu/acha/presidents.cfm American Catholic Historical Association - Past Presidents and Vice-Presidents]
* [http://www.bookfinder4u.com/detail/0805773991.html BookFinder4U.com's entry on "Paul Horgan: Yankee Plainsman"]