Owen Wister Summary

Wister, Owen (1860-1938) Owen Wister was one of a long line of lawyer-writers in American literary history. This Pennsylvania-born, Harvard-educated patrician became one of America's first and ... Read more

Owen Wister is most often thought of, not inappropriately, as a writer about the American West. Indeed, his stories and books were extremely important in establishing in the 1890s and early twentieth ... Read more

The importance of Owen Wister to the literature of the American West--and, by extension, to the development of American literature in the twentieth century--cannot be overstated. The Virginian: A Hors... Read more

In the following essay, Boatwright critiques the image of the cowboy as hero, particularly in the works of Owen Wister. If, while you were in your neighborhood grocery this morning, or any morning thi... Read more