Owen Wister and the West

Author:   Gary Scharnhorst
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
Volume:   30
ISBN:  

9780806146751


Pages:   280
Publication Date:   16 March 2015
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Owen Wister and the West


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Overview

Westerns are rarely only about the West. From the works of James Fenimore Cooper to Gary Cooper, stories set in the American West have served as vehicles for topical commentary. More than any other pioneer of the genre, Owen Wister turned the Western into a form of social and political critique, touching on such issues as race, the environment, women's rights, and immigration. In Owen Wister and the West, a biographical-literary account of Wister's life and writings, Gary Scharnhorst shows how the West shaped Wister's career and ideas, even as he lived and worked in the East. The Virginian, Wister's claim to literary fame, was published in 1902, but his writing career actually began in 1891 and continued for twenty-five years after the publication of his masterpiece. Scharnhorst traces Wister's western connections up to and through the publication of The Virginian and shows that the author remained deeply connected to the American West until his death in 1938. Like his Harvard friend Theodore Roosevelt, Wister was the sickly scion of an eastern family who recuperated in the West before returning to his home and inherited social position. His life story is punctuated with appearances by such contemporaries as Frederic Remington, Rudyard Kipling, and Ernest Hemingway. Scharnhorst thoroughly discusses Wister's experiences in the West, including a detailed chronology of his travels and the writings that grew out of them. He offers numerous insights into Wister's adroit use of sources, and provides revealing comparisons between Wister's western works and the writings of other authors treating the same region. The West, Scharnhorst shows, was the crucible in which Wister tested and expressed his political opinions, most of them startlingly conservative by present standards. Yet The Virginian remains the template for the western novel today. More than any other Western writer of the past century and a half, Wister's career merits resurrection.

Full Product Details

Author:   Gary Scharnhorst
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint:   University of Oklahoma Press
Volume:   30
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.463kg
ISBN:  

9780806146751


ISBN 10:   0806146753
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   16 March 2015
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Reviews

In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars. Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment


In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars. Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars. --Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment -In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars.---Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment


In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars. --Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment


-In this welcome new biography, Gary Scharnhorst corrects the impression left by previous biographers of Owen Wister that, after The Virginian, Wister paid little attention to the American West. As Scharnhorst shows, Wister instead continued to make the West an important theme in his travels, fiction, letters, and personal contacts. A lively and thoughtful writer, Scharnhorst shows once again why he is at the forefront of literary scholars.---Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment


Author Information

Gary Scharnhorst is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico and author of numerous books, including Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West and Julian Hawthorne: The Life of a Prodigal Son and Owen Wister and the West and Julian Hawthorne: The Life of a Prodigal Son.

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