Owen Wister Biography and List of Works

American writer whose stories helped to establish the cowboy as an archetypical, individualist hero. Wister and his predecessor James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) created the basic Western myths and themes later popularised by such writers as Zane Grey and Max Brand. Before Wister, Theodore Roosevelt published his book The Winning of the West (1889-1896) to make clear the meaning of the land beyond the Mississippi to the whole country, and Mark Twain and Bret Harte wrote their stories about frontiersmen. Although Westerns are normally set in the 19th-century, they are not considered simple historical novels, but special kind of moral tales, in which the protagonist, usually male, must defend his personal values in a violent confrontation with socially destructive forces.

"He was evidently howling the remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech best understood by cows - "Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yah-ye-ee, oooo-oop, oop, oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!" But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets are worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can produce these effects, not even from armies, eagles, or mules were such sounds ever heard on earth. The cowpuncher invented them. And when the last cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already befallen) the yells will be forever gone."
(from Lin McLean, 1898)

Owen Wister was born in Philadelphia the son of Owen Jones Wister, a physician, and Sarah (Butler) Wister, daughter of the actress Fanny Kemble. The family was interested in arts, Wister's mother played piano and the family frequently travelled abroad. Wister briefly attended schools in Switzerland and England, and studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and Harvard University.

After graduating in 1882, Wister studied music for two years in Paris. He worked as a bank clerk in New York. Due to poor health, he spent some time in the West in order to restore his physical well -being. In 1885 he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1888. Wister practiced law in his hometown Pennsylvania before devoting himself to writing. In 1898 he married Mary Channing, a cousin, and they had six children.

"When ya' call me that, smile!"

Wister had spent summers in the West, and on the basis of these experiences he wrote Western sketches. The first story, 'Hank's Woman,' appeared in Harper's, and launched his career as a writer. Beginning with his first encounter with Wyoming in 1854, he kept journals and notes, which were published in an edited form in WISTER OUT WEST (1958). In 1891, after a conversation in which the author and Roosevelt discussed the literary potential of his impressions of western life, Wister began writing his stories of America's last internal frontier. They paved the way for the novel THE VIRGINIAN: A HORSEMAN OF THE PLAINS (1902). The work was dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, and later editions contained illustrations by Frederic Remington. The story of a modest, quite hero, who is more comfortable with his horse than with other people, gained huge popularity, and was later filmed four times. In The Virginian Wister created an image of the West that was heroic as well exotic. However, for a modern reader the work can be a disappointment: "The 1902 novel, ancestor of the classic western, turned out to be not only corny and flag-waving but also intolerant and reactionary by today's standards. The story includes sentimental lectures on Americanism that sound like a jingoist speech by Theodore Roosevelt, to whom the book is dedicated." (Herbert Mitgang in The New York Times, December 2, 1989)

Wister's success did not inspire him to continue writing Western novels, although in his short stories Wister develops the genre of cowboy fiction. PHILOSOPHY 4, a story about college life at Harvard was published in 1904. LADY BALTIMORE, a novel about aristocratic Southerners in Charleston, and several works of non-fiction followed it. Wister's last major work was ROOSEVELT: THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP, 1880-1919 (1930). The biography depicts his long acquaintance with Roosevelt, a Harvard classmate. Besides novels and histories Wister published books for children. Wister's collected writings were published in 11 volumes in 1928. He died in Kingston, Rhode Island on July 21, 1938.

The Virginian (1902) The story is set in the Wyoming territory during the late 1870s and 1880s. A courageous but mysterious cowboy known only as the 'Virginian' works as the foreman of a Wyoming cattle ranch. He meets a pretty schoolteacher Molly Wood from Vermont. She introduces him the works of Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare and Keats. The Virginian is forced to preside over the hanging of his best friend Steve, who has been accused and convicted of cattle rustling. Molly is horrified and Judge Henry, the Virginians employer, explains to her the code of the West. However, their marriage is threatened by Trampas, who also works on the farm. He vows to gun down the Virginian, whose honour is now at stake. The climatic gun duel between the two men is the first "showdown" in fiction. Trampas fires first but misses and the Virginian kills Trampas. In the end the Virginian marries Molly and rides with her into the mountains. - The television series from 1962 to 1969 had little to do with the original story. Trampas (Doug McClure) became an impulsive pal rather than a villain. - The film adaptation from 1929 includes the first famous exchange in the Talkies: Huston (the villain): 'You long-legged-sonova -'. Cooper: 'If you wanna call me that, smile.' Huston: 'With a gun in my belly, I always smile.'

For further reading: Owen Wister by D. Payne (1985); Owen Wister by J. Cobbs (1984); Owen Wister by R.W. Etulain (1973); The Western by George N. Fenin and William K. Everson (1973); The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience by G.E. White (1968); My Father Owen Wister by F.K.W. Stokes (1952); The Six-Gun Mystique by John C. Cawelti (Bowling Green University Popular Press, n.d.) - See also: Other classic western writers: Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Frederick Marryat - The classical literary roots of Western epic: Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid.

THE NEW SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, (1882)