American Studies Commons^™

Hamlin Garland: The Far West, Robert Gish

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Hamlin Garland is regarded today with both condescension and respect. His Middle-Western writings, the early and later phases of his work, are more highly regarded than are the Far-Western writings of his middle phase. The cause of this unevenness in the Garland canon can be traced to his attraction to history and story, propaganda and art, Realism and Romanticism. The boundaries of fiction and non-fiction contract and expand throughout Garland’s work, just as in his life he trailed and back-trailed from the Midwest to the East and West. In this sense Garland’s writing is inseparably autobiographical and regional; and his …

Jack Schaefer, Gerald Haslam

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

In 1945 Jack Schaefer, then a Norfolk, Virginia, newspaper editor, decided to write a story “to prove that there is no reason why an attempt cannot be made to create literature about the west as about the east or the south or any place anywhere.” He set his story in a Wyoming valley torn by conflict between pioneer farmers and a resident cattle baron trying to retain the open range. Then he introduced a palladin figure called Shane.

Frederic Remington, Fred Erisman

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

To an entire generation of readers, Frederic Remington was the spokesman for the American West. For almost a quarter of a century, from 1886 until his death in 1909, his drawings and paintings, published in Harper’s Weekly, The Century, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Collier’s, and other large-circulation magazines of the time, gave to many readers their only glimpses of Western life and the western landscape. The popular acclaim for his work was echoed by the American art establishment. During his lifetime, Remington was elected to membership in the National Academy of Design and awarded an honorary Bachelor of Fine Arts …

Stewart Edward White, Judy Alter

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

"I never go anywhere for material,” Stewart Edward White once told an interviewer. "If I did, I should not get it. ... I go places merely because for one reason or another, they attract me. Then, if it happens that I get close enough to the life, I may later find that I have something to write about. A man rarely writes anything convincing unless he has lived the life; not with his critical faculty alert but wholeheartedly and because, for the time being, it is his life” (Overton, When Winter Comes to Main Street, p. 64).

White, a …

Zane Grey, Ann Ronald

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

No one knows how many words Zane Grey wrote for publication, but the estimates vary between five million and nine million. No one knows how many copies of his novels have been sold, but the number must be well over forty million. No one knows how many different languages his novels have been translated into, or how many copies of those translations have been sold, but again, the figures must be high. Ultimately, no one knows how large an audience Zane Grey’s novels have reached, either directly or through serialization and reprint, as well as through movies and television. One …

George Frederick Ruxton, Neal Lambert

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

In the spring of 1847 at Fort Leavenworth on the Indian frontier a group of United States Dragoons stood staring at a remarkable frontier figure with a “Mahogany-coloured face” and dressed in “the pride of fringed deerskin and porcupine quills.” The costume was creating "no little difference of opinion amongst the troopers” as to which Indian tribe the figure might belong to.

Washington Irving: The Western Works, Richard H. Cracroft

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Early in the fall of 1832, while steaming down the Ohio River toward its confluence with the Mississippi, the steamboat Illinois, en route to St. Louis, collided with the Yellowstone with such force that the Illinois was nearly sunk. The accident, though minor, has symbolic value in a study of Washington Irving as a Western writer, for Irving was aboard the Illinois, traveling toward Independence, Missouri, where the famous author would begin a month-long tour on the prairies of Oklahoma—the Southwest. Aboard the Yellowstone, a packet belonging to the American Fur Company, were fur traders and trappers …

H.L. Davis, Robert Bain

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

“Ex-Cowboy's Novel Wins Harper Prize" announced the New York Times in August of 1935 when H. L. Davis’ Honey in the Horn won the $7,500 Award. Davis received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1936 and established himself nationally as a Western writer of talent and consequence. During the next twentyfour years, he published seven books—four more novels, a collection of poems which he had written between 1919 and 1933, a volume of stories and sketches which had been published in magazines between 1929 and 1941, and a series of essays about the Northwest.

Frederick Manfred, Joseph M. Flora

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Alan Swallow has designated Frederick Manfred, along with other writers of the American West, a maverick. The mavericks are serious writers who have pursued their themes without much recognition from the Eastern press, partly, Swallow felt, because the Eastern press has not understood the Western themes or techniques or has been too contemptuous to make the effort. The truth of Swallow’s contention of prejudice is difficult to assess. But there is, in any event, a group of Western writers who have gone on—sometimes with little recognition—pursuing their themes, meditating on the West, writing their books. Alan Swallow was friend to …

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, L. L. Lee

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

In October 1950, Walter Van Tilburg Clark said of The Track of the Cat that it was "another step forward in my constant effort to personalize the land and put the human tragedy back into its natural setting" (N.Y. Herald Tribune Book Review, Oct. 8, 1950, p. 18). Here, in a few precise words, is the essence of Clark's intention and of his vision, for his work, as different as his novels and his short _ stories might be from one another on the surface, was built upon· that simple and yet intricate vision of man in relationship …

Bret Harte, Patrick Morrow

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Bret Harte is well known as the first internationally famous writer of short stories about the West. “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” “The Outcasts of Poker Flat," and “Tennessee’s Partner,” all published in the late 1860's, earned Harte the recognition of the nation's popular audience and approval by Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Howells, and other leading literary men of the day. In 1870 Harte, then editor of the San Francisco-based Overland Monthly, published “Plain Language from Truthful James,” better known as “The Heathen Chinee.” Hawked on the street corners, endlessly reprinted, the poem created a national sensation. Soon afterwards, Harte …