An essayist, journalist, platform lecturer, playwright, and writer of burlesque history, Bill Nye was one of the most important humorists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Although born in the East and raised in the Midwest, he achieved his fame in Laramie, Wyoming, as editor of the Laramie Boomerang and as author of books of humorous sketches and essays, many of which exhibit western influence in subject matter and literary techniques. As a humorist and satirist, Nye was ambivalent toward the West, being chauvinistic about his adopted region but also caustically critical of it. As he once commented, "The West is well known as the home of fearless and deadly journalism. It brings out all there is in a man and throws him upon his own resources. It also throws him down stairs if he is not constantly on his guard."

Edgar Wilson Nye was born...