[In the following excerpt from his Andy Adams: His Life and Writings, Hudson describes the publication history of Log of a Cowboy and evaluates the noveL]
[J. Frank Dobie was an American educator and author who often wrote about the American southwest and southwestern literature. In the following essay, Dobie discusses critical neglect of Adams's works during the 1920s and provides an overview of the author's career.]
[Capps is an American novelist whose works are often set in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. In the following explication of Log of a Cowboy, he affirms the book's primary value as a work of social history.]
[Boatright was an American educator who edited many histories and studies of the American Southwest during his thirty-year career. In the following excerpt, Boatright offers a favorable review of Why the Chisholm Trail Forks, and Other Tales of the Cattle Country.]
[The following anonymous review characterizes Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings as stilted and unconvincing in tone compared to Adams's earlier novels.]
Born in Whitley County, Indiana, Adams was raised on a cattle farm. He had little formal education and left home at the age of fifteen. After briefly working in a lumber camp near Newport, Arkansas, Adams worked as a cowboy in San Antonio, Texas, and in 1890 he moved to Rockport, Texas, where he started a feed and seed business. Four years later he followed the mining boom to Cripple Creek, Colorado, and later to Goldfield, Nevada, before settling in Colorado Springs. Adams began writing in 1898 after viewi...
None of Adams's later novels are considered as successful as The Log of a Cowboy. Critics note that Adams's ability to portray realistic scenes and his leisurely narrative style were best utilized in the episodic form of his first novel. Nevertheless, all of Adams works have been widely praised for their accuracy and realism, and Levette J. Davidson has written: "In spite of his many failures, Andy Adams remains the champion in one significant field; he...
The Log of a Cowboy is a first-person account of a cattle drive north from Texas to the Blackfoot Reservation in Northern Montana. In this work Adams provided an accurate picture of the hardships and rewards of cowboy life. Adams's later novels similarly deal with aspects of the cattle business. The Outlet, for example, depicts the world of railway companies, contractors, and congressional lobbyists and their interests in the cattle business, while Reed Anthony, Cowman: An Autobiography is the story ...
Branch, Douglas. "Andy Adams." In his The Cowboy and His Interpreters, pp. 254-70. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1926. Applauds the realism of Adams's works.
Adams is best known for his novel The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days, which is widely acknowledged as one of the most realistic and well-written accounts of cowboy life.
Hudson, Wilson M. "Andy Adams: A Bibliography." In his Andy Adams: His Life and Writings, pp. 259-65. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1964. Detailed primary bibliography of Adams's fiction, stories, and dramas.
