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Western Fiction
Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century and Louis L'Amour from the mid-20th century. The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as '' Bonanza''. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside a few west American states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books. History Pre-1850s The predecessor of the western in American literature emerged early with tales of the frontier. The most famous of the early 19th-century frontier novels were James Fenimore Cooper's five novels comprising the '' Leatherstocking Tales''. Cooper's novels were largely set in what was at the time the American frontier: the Appalachian Mountains and areas west of there. As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Culture
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Clemetino Inv305.jpg, upPlato, arguably the most influential figure in all of Western philosophy and has influenced virtually all of subsequent Western and Middle Eastern philosophy and theology. Western culture, also known as Western civilization, Occidental culture, or Western society, is the Cultural heritage, heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies of the Western world. The term applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization or influence. Western culture is most strongly influenced by Greco-Roman culture, Germanic culture, and Christian culture. The expansion of Greek cul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astoria (book)
''Astoria: Or, Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains'' is a book published in 1836 by Washington Irving. Historical background The book describes an expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River and the ultimate failure of attempts in the early 19th century to establish a permanent American-controlled commercial base at Astoria. The 1810–1813 expedition was financed by the New York business man, John Jacob Astor, with a view to establishing a trading post for his Pacific Fur Company, in competition with British and, to a lesser extent, Russian interests in the region. As described in ''Astoria'', the expedition involved a sea journey by the ship, Tonquin, as well as overland journeys that blazed what would ultimately become the Oregon Trail. The War of 1812 broke out during the attempts to make the outpost at Astoria viable. Because of direct military threats from the British, along with other problems described in the book (conflicts with indigenous peoples, managerial shor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zorro
Zorro (Spanish language, Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp magazine, pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante who defends the commoners and indigenous peoples of California against corrupt and tyrannical officials and other villains. His signature all-black costume includes a cape, a hat known as a , and a mask covering the upper half of his face. In the stories, Zorro has a high Bounty (reward), bounty on his head, but is too skilled and cunning for the bumbling authorities to catch, and he also delights in publicly humiliating them. Because of this, the townspeople started calling him ''"El Zorro"'' due to his foxlike cunning and charm. Zorro is an acrobat and an expert in various weapons, but the one he employs most frequently is his rapier, which he uses often to carve the initial "Z" on his defeated foes, and othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnston McCulley
John William Johnston McCulley (February 2, 1883 – November 23, 1958) was an American writer of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Biography Born in Ottawa, Illinois, and raised in Chillicothe, Illinois, McCulley graduated from Chillicothe Township High School in 1901. He started as a police reporter for ''The Police Gazette'' and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I. An amateur history buff, he went on to a career in pulp magazines and screenplays, often using a Southern California backdrop for his stories. Many of his novels and stories were written under the pseudonyms Harrington Strong, Raley Brien, George Drayne, Monica Morton, Rowena Raley, Frederic Phelps, Walter Pierson, and John Mack Stone, among others. Aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Spider, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Many of McCulley's ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl May
Karl Friedrich May ( , ; 25 February 1842 – 30 March 1912) was a German author. He is best known for his 19th century novels of fictitious travels and adventures, set in the American Old West with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand as main protagonists and in the Orient and Middle East with fictional characters Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadschi Halef Omar. May also wrote novels set in Latin America, China and Germany, poetry, a play, and composed music; he was a proficient player of several musical instruments. Many of his works were adapted for film, theatre, audio dramas and comics. Later in his career, May turned to philosophical and spiritual genres. He is one of the best-selling German writers of all time, with about 200,000,000 copies sold worldwide. Life and career Early life May was the fifth child of a poor family of weavers in Ernstthal, Schönburgische Rezessherrschaften (then part of the Kingdom of Saxony). He had 13 siblings, of whom nine died in infancy. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulp Magazines
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jesse James
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the " Little Dixie" area of Western Missouri, James and his family maintained strong Southern sympathies. He and his brother Frank James joined pro-Confederate guerrillas known as "bushwhackers" operating in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War. As followers of William Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, they were accused of committing atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists, including the Centralia Massacre in 1864. After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, Jesse and Frank robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest, gaining national fame and often popular sympathy despite the brutality of their crimes. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok (May 27, 1837August 2, 1876), better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation. Hickok was born and raised on a farm in northern Illinois at a time when lawlessness and vigilante activity were rampant because of the influence of the "Banditti of the Prairie". Drawn to this ruffian lifestyle, he headed west at age 18 as a fugitive from justice, working as a stagecoach driver and later as a lawman in the frontier territories of Kansas and Nebraska. He fought and spied for the Union Army during the American Civil War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp took part in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys. He is often erroneously regarded as the central figure in the shootout, although his brother Virgil was the Tombstone City and Deputy U.S. Marshal that day and had far more experience in combat as a sheriff, constable, marshal, and soldier. In 1874 Earp arrived in the boomtown of Wichita, Kansas, where his reputed wife opened a brothel. He was appointed to the Wichita police force and developed a solid reputation as a lawman but was fined and "not rehired as a police officer" after getting into a physical altercation with a political opponent of his boss. Earp immediately left Wichita, following his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas, where he became an assistant city marshal. In late 1878 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buffalo Bill
William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846January 10, 1917), known as "Buffalo Bill", was an American soldier, Bison hunting, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa, Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), but he lived for several years in his father's hometown in modern-day Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father's death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 15. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the United States Army, U.S. Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872. One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill's legend began to spread when he was only 23. Shortly thereafter he started performing in Wild West show, shows that displayed cowb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy The Kid
Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty; September 17 or November 23, 1859July 14, 1881), also known by the pseudonym William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West, who killed eight men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21. He also fought in New Mexico's Lincoln County War, during which he allegedly committed three murders. McCarty was orphaned at the age of 15. His first arrest was for stealing food at the age of 16 in 1875. Ten days later, he robbed a Chinese laundry and was arrested again but escaped shortly afterwards. He fled from New Mexico Territory into neighboring Arizona Territory, making himself both an outlaw and a federal fugitive. In 1877, he began to call himself "William H. Bonney". Two versions of a wanted poster dated September 23, 1875 referred to him as "Wm. Wright, better known as Billy the Kid". After killing a blacksmith during an altercation in August 1877, McCarty became a wanted man in Arizona and returned to New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of ''homo sacer'', and persisted throughout the Middle Ages. A secondary meaning of outlaw is a person who systematically avoids capture by evasion and violence to deter capture. These meanings are related and overlapping but not necessarily identical. A fugitive who is declared outside protection of law in one jurisdiction but who receives asylum and lives openly and obedient to local laws in another jurisdiction is an outlaw in the first meaning but not t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
