Sophus Keith Winther was a Danish-American professor and novelist.

Background

Sophus Keith Winther was born in the village of Søby, between Randers

Randers

Randers is a city in Randers municipality on the Jutland peninsula in central Denmark. It is Denmark's sixth-largest city, with a population of 60,656 . Randers city is the main town of the municipality and the site of its municipal council.-Overview:Randers municipality has 94,750 inhabitants...

 and Aarhus

Aarhus

Aarhus or Århus is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, the son of Anton Winther and Sene (Lund) Winther. The family arrived in the United States on May 6, 1895 and was naturalized in 1900. Winther attended the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

 where he received his B.S. in 1918 and his M.A. in 1919. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 in 1927.

Career

Winther became an Instructor of English at the University of Washington during 1927. He became an assistant professor in 1930, an associate professor in 1934 and a professor in the English Department in 1940.

Winther was an author whose novels center principally on the pioneer experience in the Great Plains

Great Plains

The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...

. Three of his novels, Take All to Nebraska (1936), Mortgage Your Heart (1937), and This Passion Never Dies (1937), portray the struggles of the Grimsen family who arrive in rural Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

 during the 1890s. These novels illustrate the darker side of the rural experience as fluctuating grain prices drive the family into bankruptcy.

Sophus Keith Winther was the recipient of The Western Literature Association’s
Distinguished Achievement Award in 1980. Letters, books, papers, clippings, pictures of Sophus Keith Winther can be found at The Danish American Archive and Library located on the campus of Dana College

Dana College

Dana College is a now defunct baccalaureate college located in Blair, Nebraska. Its rural 150-acre campus is approximately 25 miles northwest of Omaha, and overlooks a portion of the Missouri River Valley....

. The collection includes the manuscript of an unpublished novel of the Grimsen trilogy.

Selected works

• The Realistic War Novel (1930)
• Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study (1934)
• Take All to Nebraska (1936)
• Mortgage Your Heart (1937)
• This Passion Never Dies (1938)
• Beyond the Garden Gate (1946)