Paul George Vincent O'Shaughnessy Horgan (August 1, 1903 – March 8, 1995) was an American writer of historical fiction and non-fiction who mainly wrote about theSouthwestern United States. He was the recipient of twoPulitzer Prizes for History.
HistorianDavid McCullough wrote of Horgan in 1989: "With the exception ofWallace Stegner, no living American has so distinguished himself in both fiction and history."[1]
Paul Horgan was born inBuffalo, New York to a Catholic family[2] on August 1, 1903. After his father contracted tuberculosis, the family moved in 1915 toAlbuquerque, New Mexico for health reasons. Horgan attendedNew Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, where he formed a lifelong friendship with classmate and future artistPeter Hurd.[3] Horgan befriended physicistJ. Robert Oppenheimer in 1922 during a visit toNew Mexico. After finishing high school, Horgan spent a year working for a local newspaper.[4]
In 1923, Horgan enrolled in theEastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, but dropped out after the first year. He worked for the next three years inRochester as the set designer for a new opera company being started by tenorVladimir Rosing. Although Horgan had never designed sets before, he convinced Rosing to give him the job. The fledgling opera company later became theAmerican Opera Company.[4][5]
In 1924, Horgan returned to Albuquerque. He published his first novel,The Fault of Angels, about his experiences in Rochester in 1923; it won theHarper Prize. He continued to write 17 novels plus other works over the next five decades. Horgan served as president of theAmerican Catholic Historical Association[6]
DuringWorld War II, Horgan moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as the head of the Army Information Branch of theUS War Department. He would eventually receive theLegion of Merit and be promoted to lieutenant colonel.[7] He received aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1947.[7] In 1955, Horgan won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Bancroft Prize for history withGreat River: The Rio Grande in North American History, a history of theRio Grande River in Mexico and the United States.
In 1959, Horgan became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) atWesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Over the next 35 years, he would serve as a director of CAS, anadjunct professor of English, and as aprofessor emeritus and permanent author-in-residence.[8][9][10][7] The authorCharles Barber served as a personal assistant to Horgan when Barber was a college student. During this period, Horgan also taught seminars and workshops atYale University and the University of Iowa.[7]
In 1976, Horgan won the Pulitzer Prize for History forLamy of Santa Fe (Wesleyan University Press), a biography of ArchbishopJean-Baptiste Lamy.[11]
Horgan published 40 books and received 19 honorary degrees from universities in the United States. He received apapal knighthood fromPope Pius XII. Paul Horgan died at Middlesex County Hospital inMiddletown, Connecticut, on March 8, 1995.[5]
In 1970, Horgan started his "Heroic Triad" of novels, about the different cultures in the Southwest, with the publication ofWhitewater. It was followed byThin Mountain Air in 1977 andMexico Bay in 1982.[12]
One of Horgan's most popular works wasA Distant Trumpet, a historical novel based on theApache wars in the Southwest. Horgan's 1972 bookEncounters With Stravinsky, a biography of composerIgor Stravinsky, was called "an utterly irresistible book" byNew York Times reviewer Simon Karlinsky.[7] In 1960, author Robert Franklin Gish praised Horgan's literary contributions in themonographPaul Horgan: Yankee Plainsmanand a few other works.[13]
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Pulitzer Prize forHistory (1951–1975) | ||
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Pulitzer Prize forHistory (1976–2000) | ||
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