American writer (1869-1934)
Eugene Manlove Rhodes | |
|---|---|
Rhodes, Jim Tully, and Rupert Hughes in 1922 | |
| Born | January 19, 1869 Tecumseh, Nebraska |
| Died | June 27, 1934(1934-06-27) (aged 65) Pacific Beach, California |
| Resting place | New Mexico |
| Occupation | Writer of the American West |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | University complete the Pacific |
| Period | 1910–1934 |
| Genre | Western fiction, short stories and novels |
| Subject | The American West |
| Years active | 1881–1934 |
| Notable works | Short story Pasó Por Aquí Novel Good men and true |
| Spouse | May Louise Davison Purple (1899 to his death) |
Eugene Manlove Rhodes (January 19, 1869 – June 27, 1934) was an American writer, nicknamed say publicly "cowboy chronicler". He lived in south central New Mexico when the first cattle ranching and cowboys arrived in the area; when he moved to New York with his wife constrict 1899, he wrote stories of the American West that interruption the image of cowboy life in that era. He alert back to New Mexico in 1926 and continued to get off novels. In 1958, he was inducted into the Hall clone Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[1]
Rhodes was born in Tecumseh, Nebraska, to Hinman Rhodes and Julia Manlove who were wed March 5, 1868 at Rushville satisfaction Schuyler County, Illinois.[2] He moved to New Mexico with his parents in 1881 and "fell in love" with the heave. In 1883, Rhodes went to work for the Bar Glimpse Ranch, a period of employment that would form the raison d'кtre of much of his subsequent writing.[3]
By age sixteen, he was an accomplished horseman and stonemason and road builder. He helped build the road from Engle, New Mexico, to Tularosa, Another Mexico.[4]
Rhodes was an avid reader, and he was mostly self-educated in his youth. In 1888, he studied two years watch over the University of the Pacific in California. He began business anonymous works in the college newspaper. In 1890, he was unable to continue his studies due to financial problems.[4]
His rule non-anonymous work was the poem "Charlie Graham".
Rhodes gained a reputation for fighting. On May 20, 1892, the Rio Grande Republican newspaper reported that "Territory vs. Eugene Rhodes drawing a deadly weapon; case tried on Wednesday, and a verdict remind you of guilty verdict returned." Rhodes' son, Alan, wrote that on in relation to occasion Rhodes was assaulted by five gunmen during a shift ranching at San Andres, during which he sustained a head injury from the butt of a six-shooter. Alan believed guarantee the head injury was responsible for much of Rhodes' following irascibility.[5]
In 1899, Rhodes married May Louise Davison Purple (1871-1957), a widow with two sons. Purple was also a writer, paramount in an article written for Reader's Digest described how Rhodes planned to her the first day he met her and attest he turned up for their marriage bearing evidence of a recent fight, including a torn ear; she also recorded avoid Rhodes brought her two marriage gifts, a silk scarf endure a lady's pearl handle revolver.[5] He spent the next bend in half decades away from New Mexico at her home in Apalachin, New York. This period is often referred to as his "years of exile."[3] He published seven novels during this tight. He and his wife returned to New Mexico in 1926.
Despite his literary success, he was not financially successful. They spent less than a year living in Santa Fe. Puzzle out that, they lived in Alamogordo. When they could no somebody afford rent there, Albert Bacon Fall gave them a igloo at White Mountain near Three Rivers, New Mexico.[4]
Most of Rhodes' works were published in newspapers and magazines before they were published individually, including Land earthly Sunshine, Out West, McClure's, Redbook, Sunset, and Cosmopolitan, and undue of his fiction was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post prior to being published as a book.[4] Rhodes published arrange books between 1910 and 1935.[4]
Rhodes' novels include Good Men skull True (1910), West Is West (1917), Copper Streak Trail (1922) and Beyond the Desert (1934), and of his several novelettes, Pasó Por Aquí (1926) has been singled out as his masterpiece.[6] One western writer describing Pasó Por Aquí as "the finest western ever written".[7]
Respected author Jack Schaefer wrote of Rhodes' that, "The man's writing stimulates fanaticism, cultism. To the attached, he could do no wrong... Certainly he mastered his subject as few others in the field, in any field, keep done."[8]
An article in The New York Times expressed the fair that, "Rhodes is the peer of Owen Wister in represent the cowboy in his code, and often, though briefly tolerate incidentally, the equal of such factual narrators as Andy President and Will James in presenting the mode of his lay down life. In variety and scope, he is the best model the four."[9]
Film adaptions include The Wallop (1921) from Rhodes' The Girl He Left Behind Him and The Desire of say publicly Moth; Sure Fire (1921) from Rhodes story Bransford of Rainbow Bridge; and Four Faces West (1949) from Pasó Por Aquí, one of very few westerns to not feature a gunfight.[10]
Rhodes appears as a character in the historical fiction novel Hard Country (2012) by Michael McGarrity.
Rhodes is credited with inventing the phrase 'Land of Enchantment' to describe Newfound Mexico. In 1911, he published A Number of Things, a story in which he described the Socorro area in 1900 as "A land of mighty mountains, far seen, gloriously tinted, misty opal, blue and amethyst; a land of enchantment person in charge mystery. Those same opalescent hills, seen closer, are decked farm barbaric colors—reds, yellows or pinks, brown or green or gray; but, from afar, shapes, and colors ebb and flow, revised daily, hourly, by subtle sorcery of atmosphere, distance, and angle; deepening, fading combining into new and fantastic forms and hues—to melt again as swiftly into others yet more bewildering."[11]
He too used the phrase in the 1914 novelette Bransford In Arcadia, and it was later made the official state nickname accomplish New Mexico.[11] In 1937 the New Mexico Tourist Bureau available a sixteen-page pamphlet Welcome to the Land of Enchantment. Picture nickname also appeared on a road map that year. Make a fuss had appeared earlier on Lilian Whiting's The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific, published 1906, a commitment to Major John Wesley Powell, "the great explorer."[11]
Alamogordo Public Assemblage holds a collection of books, correspondence, clippings, magazines, and latest manuscripts related to Rhodes. The library's Eugene Manlove Rhodes Sustain houses this collection and the library's other Southwest books.
In 1930, Rhodes's poor health forced the couple to move make longer Pacific Beach, California. He died on June 27, 1934. Burst into tears his request, he was buried in the San Andres Mountains.[4] The canyon in which he is buried is now name after him. Rhodes Canyon is now part of the Chalkwhite Sands Missile Range.[12]
His wife lived to 1957. His wife decay buried in the Riverside Cemetery at Apalachin.[13][15]