Owen Wister's powerful story of the silent stranger who rides into the uncivilized West and defeats the forces of evil embodies one of the most enduring themes in American mythology.

Set in the vast Wyoming territory, The Virginian (1902) captures both the grandeur and the loneliness of the frontier experience, brilliantly evoking the tension between the romantic freedom of the great, untamed landscape and mankind's deep-seated desire for community and social order. Wister brings to life the honesty and rough justice that ruled the range and the civilizing influence of determined women in frontier settlements that imposed a sense of society on an unruly population.

For Wister, the West tested a man's true worth. His hero-influenced by those of Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper-is a man who lives by the classic code of chivalry, ruled by quiet courage and a deeply felt sense of honor.

The classic novel of post-Civil War Charleston life, a portrayal of the process of healing the wounds of war through reconciliation between Northerners and Southerners on a personal, not political, level. Southern Classics Series.

Dime novels had featured some rather scrawny horse-bound tenders of cattle, but not until 1902 did the cowboy become a fully realized article of American culture. That year Owen Wister, a native of Philadelphia, published the novel that established the conventions of the western. An immediate best seller, it has never faded from public consciousness. Suddenly there was the natural aristocrat, the Virginian, who faced down the archetypal villain. Trampas, flinging at him the unforgettable words "When you call me that, smile " There was the eastern schoolteacher, Molly, far from being a wilted flower. They moved in the raw, bracing atmosphere that generations of readers and moviegoers would come to expect from westerns. To read The Virginian, again or for the first time, is to enter a cultural phenomenon.

This Bison Book makes available once more the memorable 1929 edition that brought together the art of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. It adds an introduction by one of today's most brilliant creators of rugged individualists, Thomas McGuane. The author of "Nobody's Angel" (1982) and "Keep the Change" (1989), McGuane shows how "The Virginian" "bears all the advantages and disadvantages of being a precursor."

Owen Wister is remembered today almost solely as the author of "The Virginian," yet his short stories, dating from the turn of the century, gave us our first real knowledge of the West's "wide, wild farm and ranch community, spotted with remote towns, and veined with infrequent railroads." And this West was not merely that of the cowboy, but of the soldier, the seeker, the Indians, the hunter, even the priest. This volume presents six of Wister's finest stories, chosen to exhibit the less well remembered facets of his talent. Their settings--ranging from a mining camp in the Rockies to a northwestern territorial capital to a southwestern desert town, and from a California mission to army posts on the high plains--are as varied as the characters and the situations.

The introduction by Robert L. Hough discusses the factors the impelled Wister to write about the West ad his ambivalent feelings about the region, as well as his story-telling techniques and artistic goals.

As the American West opened up to settlers after the Civil War, people were eager for tales of great adventures, endless possibilities, and the pioneering spirit. Classic Westerns is a collection of six novels that captured this sense of exploration and brought the rugged landscape into the homes of readers everywhere. These novels—The Virginian by Owen Wister, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, The Lone Star Ranger and The Mysterious Rider by Zane Grey, and Gunman’s Reckoning and The Untamed by Max Brand—tell of life on the open plains, in dusty outposts, and alongside majestic mountain ranges that rose to greet travelers who ventured forth into the unexplored country to find their destinies.