This exhaustive bibliographical reference will be the first stop
for anyone looking for Calamity Jane in print, film, or photograph
- and wanting to know how reliable those sources may be. Richard W.
Etulain, renowned western-U.S. historian and the author of a recent
biography of this charismatic figure, enumerates and assesses the
most valuable sources on Calamity Jane's life and legend in
newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and movies, as well as
historical and government archives. Etulain begins with a brief
biography of Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane (1856-1903), then
analyzes the origins and growth of her legends. The sources,
Etulain shows, reveal three versions of Calamity Jane. In the most
popular one, she was a Wild Woman of the Old West who helped push a
roaring frontier through its final stages. This is the Calamity
Jane who fought Indians, marched with the military, and took on the
bad guys. Early in her life she also hoped to embody the pioneer
woman, seeking marriage and a stable family and home. A third,
later version made of Calamity an angel of mercy who reached out to
the poor and nursed smallpox victims no one else would help. The
hyperbolic journalism of the Old West, as well as dime novels and
the stretchers Calamity herself told in her interviews and
autobiography, shaped her legends through much of the twentieth
century. Many of the sensational early accounts of Calamity's life,
Etulain notes, were based on rumor and hearsay. In illuminating the
role of the Deadwood Dick dime novel series and other pulp fiction
in shaping what we know - or think we know - of the American West,
Etulain underscores one of his fascinating themes: the power of
popular culture. The product of twenty years' labor sifting fact
from falsehood or distortion, this bibliography and reader's guide
includes brief discussions of nearly every item's contents, along
with a terse, entertaining evaluation of its reliability.
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