The Virginian

Published in 1902, "The Virginian" is the most famous work of Owen Wister, an American writer, and historian. The novel is a complex mixture of people, places, and events dramatized from experience, word of mouth, and his own imagination—ultimately creating the quintessential cowboy, who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War, and taking the side of the large landowners. It is rich in moral drama and vernacular wit. The novel is also on record for incorporating the first known ‘shootout’ in American literature.
In 1977, it was voted by the Western American Writers as the greatest western novel of all time. Brimming with action, romance, and atmosphere, it remains a classic of frontier fiction.

"Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader..." —Owen Wister (The Virginian)

Owen Wister (1860-1938) showed promise as a musician early in his life, but his father directed him into a career in banking and then the law. Plagued with neurasthenia, Wister took a variant of the ""rest cure"" of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, traveling to Wyoming on Mitchell's advice. From these experiences, Wister began to write short stories about the West. His Western writing culminated in the 1902 publication of The Virginian, the most popular Western ever written. In addition to novels, Wister wrote short stories, operas, plays, poetry, and nonfiction, including biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington.