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 Horseman of the Plains (1902) lifted the frontier story out of the dime-novel category founded by Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingraham and placed it securely in the mainstream. With The Virginian Wister fashioned both a native language and a national voice, characteristics sorely lacking in previous attempts to establish a literary culture independent from that of Europe. Most if not all of the staples associated with the western genre--fast-draw contests, the Arthurian code, and such immortal lines as "This town ain't big enough for both of us" and "When you call me that--smile!"--first appeared in this groundbreaking novel about one man's championship of justice in the wilderness. Wister's interpretation of the West as a place where few of the...