Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop is the great novel of nineteenth-century New Mexico. Following Father Jean Marie Latour and his friend Father Vaillant as they labor to establish the Catholic diocese across the high desert, Cather wove a luminous, episodic narrative grounded in the real lives of Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Father Joseph Machebeuf. Since its 1927 publication it has shaped how generations of readers imagine Santa Fe, Taos, and the mesa country between them.
This later Vintage paperback carries cover and back art by the illustrator Lonsdale, depicting the archbishop in his broad hat against a Southwestern sky, with a horse waiting in the dunes. The New York Times blurb on the back praises the book's resistance to classification, a quality readers still prize. A handsome reading copy of a New Mexico classic, it preserves the affordable edition through which many first encountered Cather's masterpiece.
Later Vintage paperback of Cather's 1927 New Mexico classic
A Vintage Books paperback (catalog V-679) of Cather's novel first published by Knopf in 1927; a reading copy, not the 1927 first. This is a Vintage Books book; see how Vintage Books states its first printings.
| Author | Willa Cather |
| Publisher | Vintage Books |
| ISBN | 394-71679-5 |
| Edition | Later Vintage paperback of Cather's 1927 New Mexico classic |
| Condition | Mass-market paperback, edge wear. |
| Topic | New Mexico literature |
Photographs © New Mexico Literacy Project, licensed CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution. This is an identification and provenance record of a real donation; no appraisal or valuation is offered.
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