The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

Owen Wister

mar 2012 · Courier Corporation

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A strong, silent stranger rides into the lawless lands of the western frontier, battles horse thieves, deals with unyielding scoundrels, and wins the heart of a schoolmarm. Owen Wister's 1902 classic—the first great novel of the American West—is rich in moral drama and vernacular wit. His hero—like knights of old—lives by an enduring code of chivalry and is governed by quiet courage and a deep sense of honor.
Set in the vast Wyoming territory, this masterpiece helped establish the code of the West and its stereotypical characters: the genteel but brave, white-hatted cowboy, the pretty spinster from back East, and villains beyond redemption. The novel is also on record for incorporating the first known "shootout" in American literature.
Performed in theaters before it was made into several motion pictures and a television series, The Virginian was voted by the Western American Writers in 1977 as the greatest Western novel of all time. Brimming with action, romance, and atmosphere, it remains a classic of frontier fiction.

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A Philadelphian and grandson of the actress Fanny Kemble, Owen Wister was educated in private schools in the United States and abroad and graduated from Harvard University with highest honors in music. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he traveled to Wyoming to recover his health. He then made frequent trips back to the West. His only well-known novel, The Virginian (1902), a bestseller for years, is a pioneer western about a man Wister considered to be the "last heroic figure" of America. It was dedicated to his lifelong friend Theodore Roosevelt, another outdoorsman and lover of the West, whom he had met when they were both students at Harvard. Although often ignored as serious literature, Wister's novel with its archetypal hero has widely influenced popular western novels and films. Two of Wister's reprinted books are Lin McLean (1898) and Lady Baltimore (1906).