Santa Fe and Taos: The Writer's Era 1916-1941 [Paperback]

Marta Weigle (Author), Kyle Fiore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

Both Santa Fe and Taos are well known as important twentieth-century American art colonies, but their fame has rested more on the reputations of resident and visiting artists than the contributions of the writers, playwrights and poets, notable among them D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandburg, John Galsworthy, Sinclair Lewis and Edna St. Vincent Millay, who visited or lived and worked side-by-side with the artists. First published in 1982, Santa Fe and Taos: The Writer's Era, 1916-1941 highlights 'Literary New Mexico': the writers who followed Alice Corbin Henderson to Santa Fe and Mabel Dodge Luhan to Taos after 1916 and who later sought the company of Witter Bynner, Spud Johnson, Mary Austin, Haniel Long and Oliver La Farge, residents during what Southwest Classics author Lawrence Clark Powell calls a 'glorious literary period.'

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marta Weigle has taught anthropology, English, and American studies at the University of New Mexico since 1972. Currently a University Regents Professor in the Anthropology Department, she has chaired that department and the American Studies Department. Among her many books on the Southwest are the co-authored The Lore of New Mexico (1988, 2003), the edited New Mexicans in Cameo and Camera: New Deal Documentation of Twentieth-Century Lives (1985), and the co-edited The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway (1996) and Telling New Mexico: A New History (2009). She is also the author of Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitentes of the Southwest and its companion A Penitente Bibliography as well as Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology, all from Sunstone Press. In 2005 she received the inaugural State Historian's Award for Excellence in New Mexico Heritage Scholarship from the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division.

Kyle Fiore is an artist and writer teaching at the University of New Mexico, fascinated by student minds and possibilities for human peace. She is co-author of Las Mujeres: Conversations from a Hispanic Community (1980). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ancient City Pr (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941270793
• ISBN-13: 978-0941270793
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,483,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at a fascinating time, October 21, 2007

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Santa Fe and Taos: The Writer's Era 1916-1941 (Paperback)

Writers have come to Santa Fe for decades en masse, for well over a century in a handful of cases, and for many hundreds of years if you include the fragments of myths and history hinted at through rock-pecked petroglyphs.

It was not until 1916, however, that enough writers began moving to Santa Fe that people began to refer to them all as a writers' colony. It was in 1916 that poet Alice Corbin Henderson first moved to the city, desperately hoping that New Mexico's desert climate would help to dry the tuberculosis from her lungs. As Corbin Henderson recovered, she began inviting her friends to come to visit her from other states. Many of these friends were poets and writers, and many found themselves strongly influenced by the worlds of the Western desert, the exotic mix of cultures, and the ancient past that Santa Fe had suddenly shown to them. Years went by, a spirited rivalry with the writers of Taos evolved, and writers continued to discover Santa Fe for themselves.

Some stayed for years, such as Mary Austin, author of the classic 1903 "Land of Little Rain"; and poet Witter Bynner, a man perhaps less well-known today for such books as "An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems," than for being openly homosexual in the 1920s, and for pouring a glass of beer over the head of visiting poet Robert Frost, in 1935.

Others, such as Willa Cather---who found in Santa Fe the inspiration and setting for her controversial classic, Death Comes for the Archbishop--stayed merely long enough to get an idea, get motivated, or be inspired.

Marta Weigle--a Santa Fe writer herself--is undoubtedly one of New Mexico's best historical writers, and this is one of my favorite books of hers. It's co-written with Kyle Fiore. The book details the dramatic histories of both the Santa Fe and Taos writers' colonies, and does so clearly and entertainingly, drawing effectively from the authors' rich knowlegdge of New Mexico history in general. It's full of terrific photographs, and well worth whatever you pay for it.

Highly recommended, and an excellent companion to Lynn Cline's "Literary Pilgrims," and Barbara Harrelson's "Walks in Literary Santa Fe."