Owen Wister: Chronicler of the West, Gentleman of the East - Hardcover

Payne, Darwin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870742051 ISBN 13: 9780870742057

Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr, 1985

Synopsis

In what remains the only full-length biography of Owen Wister (1860â 1938), Darwin Payne details the life of the man who created the popular image of the cowboy that dominated American culture from the early 1900s to the 1960s. Payne follows Wister from his privileged childhood in Philadelphia, to his undergraduate days at Harvard, to his musical studies in Europe, to his â discoveryâ of the West, and through his maturation as an individual and a writer. Payne draws on Wisterâ s own voluminous papers and writings in delineating, for the first time, the real-life incident that prompted Wister to invent the character of â the Virginian,â and in presenting the actual individual whom the famous character most closely resembles. Payne also provides intimate details about Wisterâ s surprising friendships with such prominent American figures as Theodore Roosevelt, William Dean Howells, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James, Frederic Remington, and John Jay Chapman. (20110302)

About this title

About the Author

Darwin Payne is professor emeritus of communications at Southern Methodist University and the author of several books, including Quest for Justice: Louis A. Bedford Jr. and the Struggle for Equal Rights in Texas and Indomitable Sarah: The Life of Judge Sarah T. Hughes.

Review

“No previous discussions of Wister have been so probing or revealing as this account of the author’s humanness. . . . [This is] an authoritative life-story of Owen Wister, a central figure in understanding the important role of the West in American culture.”—Richard W. Etulain, Pacific Historical Review (Richard W. Etulain Pacific Historical Review 2011-03-02)

“An excellent biography of the most complex of American eccentrics, who also invented the Western cowboy novel.”—National Review (National Review 2011-03-02)

“This is a first-rate biography. . . . Payne has written a sensitive, candid, balanced life of Owen Wister that is likely to remain the standard study of the writer for some time to come.”—Edwin R. Bingham, Journal of American History (Journal of American History 2011-03-02)

“Darwin Payne is to be congratulated on this fresh, thorough, and fair-minded study of Owen Wister.”—Howard R. Lamar, Journal of the Southwest (Howard R. Lamar Journal of the Southwest 2011-03-02)

"Gracefully written and exhaustively researched."—Choice (Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0870742051
• ISBN 13: 9780870742057
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 377