This Halcyon Classics ebook contains eighteen western stories by Owen Wister, often regarded as the "father" of western fiction. A native of Pennsylvania, Wister (1860-1938) spent a number of long summers in the west, where he became friends with western artist Frederic Remington. He was also close friends with Teddy Roosevelt, another easterner who fell in love with the west. Wister's journeys and experiences contributed to his fascination with the culture, history, and lore of the closing frontier. THE VIRGINIAN, Wister's best-known work, is a heavily fictionalized story of the Johnson County War in 1890s Wyoming. The story recounts the conflicts over cattle theft between large and small ranchers in the new, sparsely-settled state. The novel takes the side of the large ranchers, and depicts lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the hero as a necessary part of maintaining law and order. This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation. Novels The Virginian Lin McLean Short Stories A Kinsman of Red Cloud A Pilgrim on the Gila Hank’s Woman La Tinaja Bonita Little Big Horn Medicine Napoleon Shave-Tail Padre Ignazio Salvation Gap Sharon’s Choice Specimen Jones The General’s Bluff The Jimmyjohn Boss The Promised Land The Second Missouri Compromise The Serenade at Siskiyou Twenty Minutes for Refreshments
Author
Owen Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in Germantown, a neighborhood within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician, one of a long line of Wisters raised at the storied Belfield estate in Germantown. His mother, Sarah Butler Wister, was the daughter of actress Fanny Kemble. Education He briefly attended schools in Switzerland and Britain, and later studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt, an editor of the Harvard Lampoon and a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter). Wister graduated from Harvard in 1882. At first he aspired to a career in music, and spent two years studying at a Paris conservatory. Thereafter, he worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law, having graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1888. Following this, he practiced with a Philadelphia firm, but was never truly interested in that career. He was interested in politics, however, and was a staunch Theodore Roosevelt backer. In the 1930s, he opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Writing career Wister had spent several summers out in the American West, making his first trip to Wyoming in 1885. Like his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Wister was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of the region. On an 1893 visit to Yellowstone, Wister met the western artist Frederic Remington; who remained a lifelong friend. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the 1902 novel The Virginian, the loosely constructed story of a cowboy who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War and taking the side of the large land owners. This is widely regarded as being the first cowboy novel and was reprinted fourteen times in eight months.[5] The book is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt. Personal life In 1898, Wister married Mary Channing, his cousin.The couple had six children. Wister's wife died during childbirth in 1913, as Theodore Roosevelt's first wife had died giving birth to Roosevelt's first daughter, Alice. Wister died at his home in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. He is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
