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
Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and dentist. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American fronti ...
from the early 20th century and
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work "frontier stories"); however, he also wrote hi ...
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
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...
and areas west of there. As did his novel ''The Prairie'' (1824), most later westerns would typically take place west of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...
.
The notable writer
Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...
was inspired by Cooper and wrote Tales of the
american frontier beginning with ''A Tour on the Prairies'' which related his recent travels on the frontier. In 1834, he was approached by fur magnate
John Jacob Astor
John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by History of opium in China, smuggl ...
, who convinced him to write a history of his fur trading colony in
Astoria, Oregon. Irving made quick work of Astor's project, shipping the fawning biographical account ''
Astoria'' in February 1836.
1850s–1900
The Western as a specialized genre got its start in the "
penny dreadful
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to ...
s" and later the "
dime novels
The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term ''dime novel'' has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, r ...
". Published in June 1860, ''Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter'' is considered the first dime novel. These cheaply made books were hugely successful and capitalized on the many stories that were being told about the
mountain men
A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s (with a peak population in the early 1840s). They were instrumental in opening up ...
,
outlaws, settlers, and lawmen who were taming the western frontier. Many of these novels were fictionalized stories based on actual people, such as
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 th ...
,
Buffalo Bill,
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 l ...
(who was still alive at the time),
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 ...
, and
Jesse James.
1900s–1930s
By 1900, the new medium of
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, magazine ...
helped to relate these adventures to easterners. Meanwhile, non-American authors, like the German
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 pro ...
, picked up the genre, went to full novel length, and made it hugely popular and successful in continental Europe from about 1880 on, though they were generally dismissed as trivial by the literary critics of the day. One of the most famous pulp works of the era was
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 O ...
's first
Zorro
Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American 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 w ...
novel, ''
The Curse of Capistrano'' (1919).
Popularity grew with the publication of
Owen Wister
Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer and historian, considered the "father" of western fiction. He is best remembered for writing '' The Virginian'' and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.
Biography
Early life ...
's novel ''
The Virginian'' (1902) and especially
Zane Grey
Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and dentist. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American fronti ...
's ''
Riders of the Purple Sage'' (1912). The first
Hopalong Cassidy stories by
Clarence Mulford appeared in 1904, both as
dime novel
The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term ''dime novel'' has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, r ...
s and in
pulp magazines. When pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s, Western fiction greatly benefited (as did the author
Max Brand
Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American writer known primarily for his Western (genre), Western stories using the pseudonym Max Brand. He (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young ...
, who excelled at the western short story). Pulp magazines that specialised in Westerns include ''
Cowboy Stories'', ''
Ranch Romances'', ''
Star Western'', ''
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
'', and ''
Western Story Magazine
''Western Story Magazine'' was a pulp magazine published by Street & Smith, which ran from 1919 to 1949.Doug Ellis, John Locke, and John Gunnison, (editors),''The Adventure House Guide to the Pulps'', Adventure House, 2000. (pp. 311–12). It was ...
''. The simultaneous popularity of
Western movies in the 1920s also helped the genre.
1940s–1960s
In the 1940s several seminal Westerns were published, including ''
The Ox-Bow Incident'' (1940) by
Walter van Tilburg Clark, ''
The Big Sky'' (1947) and ''
The Way West'' (1949) by
A.B. Guthrie Jr., and ''
Shane
Shane may refer to:
People
* Shane (actress) (born 1969), American pornographic actress
* Shane (New Zealand singer) (born 1946)
* iamnotshane (born 1995), formerly known as Shane, American singer
* Shane (name)
Shane is mainly a masculine g ...
'' (1949) by
Jack Schaefer
Jack Warner Schaefer (November 19, 1907 – 24 January 1991) was an American writer known for his Westerns. His best-known works are the 1949 novel ''Shane'', voted the greatest western novel, and the 1964 children's book ''Stubby Pringle's C ...
. Many other Western authors gained readership in the 1950s, such as Ray Hogan,
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work "frontier stories"); however, he also wrote hi ...
, and
Luke Short
Luke Lamar Short (January22, 1854September8, 1893) was an American Old West gunfighter, cowboy, U.S. Army scout, dispatch rider, gambler, boxing promoter, and saloon owner. He survived numerous gunfights, the most famous of which were agains ...
.
The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the tremendous number of
Westerns on television
Television westerns are a subgenre of the Western, a genre of film, fiction, drama, television programming, etc., in which stories are set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West, Western Canada and Mexico during t ...
. The burnout of the American public on television Westerns in the late 1960s seemed to have an effect on the literature as well, and interest in Western literature began to wane. In 1968 Charles Portis published ''
True Grit'', which became the most successful work of the era.
Western comics
Western novels, films and pulps gave birth to Western
comics, which were very popular, particularly from the late 1940s until circa 1967, when the comics began to turn to reprints. This can particularly be seen at
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...
, where Westerns began circa 1948 and thrived until 1967, when one of their flagship titles, ''
Kid Colt Outlaw'' (1949–1979), ceased to have new stories and entered the reprint phase. Other notable long-running Marvel Western comics included ''
Rawhide Kid'' (1955–1957, 1960–1979) ''
Two-Gun Kid
The Two-Gun Kid is the name of two Western fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first, Clay Harder, was introduced in a 1948 comic from Marvel predecessor Timely Comics. The second, Matt Hawk a ...
'' (1948–1962), and ''Marvel Wild Western'' (1948–1957).
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
published the long-running series ''
All-Star Western'' (1951–1961) and ''
Western Comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier (usually anywhere west of the Mississippi River) and typically set during the late nineteenth century. The term is generally associated with an American comic books ...
'' (1948–1961), and
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1945 to 1986, having begun under a different name: T.W.O. Charles Company, in 1940. It was based in Derby, Connecticut. The comic-book line was a division of Charlton ...
published ''
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 th ...
'' (1957–1983) and ''Cheyenne Kid'' (1957–1973).
Magazine Enterprises
Magazine Enterprises was an American comic book company lasting from 1943 to 1958, which published primarily Western, humor, crime, adventure, and children's comics, with virtually no superheroes. It was founded by Vin Sullivan, an editor at Co ...
' ''Straight Arrow'' ran from 1950 to 1956, and
Prize Comics
A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people (such as sporting teams and organizations) to recognize and reward their actions and achievements. ' ''Prize Comics Western'' ran from 1948 to 1956.
Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s. Its most popular character was Captain Marvel (DC Comics), Captain Marvel, the alter ego of ...
published a number of Western titles, including ''Hopalong Cassidy'' from 1948 to 1953. They also published comics starring actors known for their Western roles, including ''
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix; January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western films between 1909 and 1935. He appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent films. He w ...
Western'' (1948–1953) and ''
Gabby Hayes
Gabby is a given name, usually a short form of Gabriel or Gabrielle or Gabriella.
Gabby or Gabbie may refer to:
People with the name
* Gabby Chaves (born 1993), Colombian-American racing driver
* Guy Gabaldon (also "Gabby"; 1926–2006 ...
Western'' (1948–1953). Similarly,
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1974. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium.Evanier, Mark" ...
published
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers (born Leonard Franklin Slye; November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998) was an American singer, actor, and television host. Following early work under his given name, first as co-founder of the Sons of the Pioneers and then acting, the rebra ...
comics from 1948 to 1961, and
Magazine Enterprises
Magazine Enterprises was an American comic book company lasting from 1943 to 1958, which published primarily Western, humor, crime, adventure, and children's comics, with virtually no superheroes. It was founded by Vin Sullivan, an editor at Co ...
published ''
Charles Starrett
Charles Robert Starrett (March 28, 1903 – March 22, 1986) was an American actor, best known for his starring role in the ''Durango Kid'' westerns. Starrett still holds the record for starring in the longest series of theatrical features: ...
as the Durango Kid'' from 1949 to 1955.
The popular Western
comic strip ''
Red Ryder
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...
'' was syndicated in hundreds of American newspapers from 1938 to 1964.
1970s and 1980s
In the 1970s, the work of
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work "frontier stories"); however, he also wrote hi ...
began to catch hold of most western readers and he has tended to dominate the western reader lists ever since.
George G. Gilman also maintained a cult following for several years in the 1970s and 1980s.
Larry McMurtry
Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. 's and
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., July 20, 1933) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is known for his gr ...
's works remain notable. Specifically, McMurtry's ''
Lonesome Dove
''Lonesome Dove'' is a 1985 Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the first published book of the ''Lonesome Dove'' series, but the third installment in the series chronologically.
The story revolves around the relationships b ...
'' and McCarthy's ''
Blood Meridian
''Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West'' is a 1985 in literature, 1985 Epic (genre), epic novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western (genre), Western, or sometimes the Revisionist Western, anti-Western, g ...
'' (both published in 1985) are recognized as major masterpieces both within and beyond the genre.
Elmer Kelton, mostly noted for his novels ''The Good Old Boys'' and ''The Time it Never Rained'', was voted by the Western Writers of America as the "Best Western Writer of All Time". Early in the 1970s Indiana novelist
Marilyn Durham wrote two popular Western novels, ''
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing'' and ''Dutch Uncle''.
Western readership as a whole began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s. A partial exception was an innovation, the so-called "adult western". As
Robert J. Randisi puts it, "it's a western novel with sex in it. That's right, the cowboy has sex with women. A new idea? Probably not, but heretofore this had not been seen in western novels (certainly not by Max Brand, Zane Grey, Owen Wister or Louis L'Amour). What these books actually showed was that men and women really did have sex in the old west. (Back when I started the series a rigidly traditional western writer of my acquaintance insisted to me that "women did not have orgasms in the old west.")."
1990s and 2000s
Readership of western fiction reached a new low in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and most bookstores, outside a few western states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books. Nevertheless, several Western fiction series are published monthly, such as ''
The Trailsman,
Slocum,
Longarm'' and ''
The Gunsmith''; these are all "adult westerns". One contribution to the genre was by Canadian author
Guy Vanderhaeghe, who published a trilogy of Western novels: ''
The Englishman's Boy
''The Englishman's Boy'' is a novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe, published in 1996 by McClelland and Stewart, which won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1996 and was nominated for the Giller Prize. It deals with the events of ...
'', ''
The Last Crossing'', and ''A Good Man''. The genre has seen the rumblings of a revival, and 2008 saw the publication of an all-Western short story magazine ''Great Western Fiction'' which was published by Dry River Publishing in
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
. Nevertheless, the magazine was short-lived and folded after only two issues. One of the most successful Western novels in recent times was ''
The Sisters Brothers'' (2011) by
Patrick deWitt.
Organizations
Western authors are represented by the
Western Writers of America
Western Writers of America (WWA), founded 1953, promotes literature, both fictional and nonfictional, pertaining to the American West. Although its founders wrote traditional Western fiction, the more than 600 current members also include histori ...
, who present the annual
Spur Awards and Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. The organization was founded in 1953 to promote the literature of the American West. While the founding members were mostly western fiction writers, the organization began getting a number of other members from other backgrounds such as historians, regional history buffs, and writers from other genres.
Western Fictioneers, founded in 2010, is a professional writers' group that encourages and promotes the traditional Westerns. It is the only professional writers' organization composed entirely of authors who have written Western fiction. Fans of the genre may join as patron members. The Western Fictioneers' annual Peacemakers competition awards prizes in many categories of Western writing.
See also
*
List of Western fiction authors
*
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referr ...
References
Bibliography
* Boatright, Mody C. "The Formula in Cowboy Fiction and Drama." ''Western Folklore'' (1969): 136–145
in JSTOR* Davis, David B. "Ten-Gallon Hero." ''American Quarterly'' (1954) 6#2 pp: 111–125
in JSTOR* Durham, Philip. "The Cowboy and the Myth Makers." ''The Journal of Popular Culture'' (1967) 1#1 pp: 58–62.
* Estleman, Loren D. The ''Wister trace: classic novels of the American frontier'' (Jameson Books, 1987)
*
* Hamilton, Cynthia S. ''Western and hard-boiled detective fiction in America: from high noon to midnight'' (Macmillan, 1987)
*
*
* McVeigh, Stephen. ''The American Western'' (Edinburgh University Press, 2007.)
* Marsden, Michael T. "The Popular Western Novel as a Cultural Artifact." ''Arizona and the West'' (1978): 203–214
in JSTOR* Stauffer, Helen Winter, and
Susan J. Rosowski, eds. ''Women and western American literature'' (Whitston Publishing Company, 1982)
External links
The Western Writers of America website
{{Narrative
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...