Owen Wister
Owen Wister's Books(4)
A Straight Deal or the Ancient Grudge
Literature Owen Wister (1860-1938) was an American writer of western novels. He studied at the Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt and graduated in 1888. At first he aspired to a career in music, and spent two years studying at a Paris conservatory. Thereafter, he worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law. Wister had spent several summers out in the American West and was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of that region. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the 1902 novel The Virginian: Horseman of the Plains. This is widely regarded as being the first American western novel. Amongst his other works are: Lin McLean (1897), The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories (1900), Philosophy 4 (1903), Lady Baltimore (1906), Mother (1907), Padre Ignacio; or, The Song of Temptation (1911) and A Straight Deal (1920). Lady Baltimore
Romance S. Weir Mitchell
With the Affection and Memories of All My Life
To the Reader
You know the great text in Burns, I am sure, where he wishes he could see himself as others see him. Well, here lies the hitch in many a work of art: if its maker--poet, painter, or novelist--could but have become its audience too, for a single day, before he launched it irrevocably upon the uncertain ocean of publicity, how much better his boat would often sail! How many little touches to the rigging he would give, how many little drops of oil to the engines here and there, the need of which he had never suspected, but for that trial trip! That's where the ship-builders and dramatists have the advantage over us others: they can dock their productions and tinker at them. Even to the musician comes this useful chance, and Schumann can reform the proclamation which opens his B-flat Symphony.
Still, to publish a story in weekly numbers previously to its appearance as a book does sometimes give to the watchful author an opportunity to learn, before it is too late, where he has failed in clearness; and it brings him also, through the mails, some few questions that are pleasant and proper to answer when his story sets forth united upon its journey of adventure among gentle readers.
How came my hero by his name?
If you will open a book more valuable than any I dare hope to write, and more entertaining too, The Life of Paul Jones, by Mr. Buell, you will find the real ancestor of this imaginary boy, and fall in love with John Mayrant the First, as did his immortal captain of the Bon Homme Richard. He came from South Carolina; and believing his seed and name were perished there to-day, I gave him a descendant. I have learned that the name, until recently, was in existence; I trust it will not seem taken in vain in these pages.
Whence came such a person as Augustus?
Our happier cities produce many Augustuses, and may they long continue to do so! If Augustus displeases any one, so much the worse for that one, not for Augustus. To be sure, he doesn't admire over heartily the parvenus of steel or oil, whose too sudden money takes them to the divorce court; he calls them the 'yellow rich'; do you object to that? Nor does he think that those Americans who prefer their pockets to their patriotism, are good citizens. He says of such people that 'eternal vigilance cannot watch liberty and the ticker at the same time.' Do you object to that? Why, the young man would be perfect, did he but attend his primaries and vote more regularly,--and who wants a perfect young man?
What would John Mayrant have done if Hortense had not challenged him as she did?
I have never known, and I fear we might have had a tragedy.
Would the old ladies really have spoken to Augustus about the love difficulties of John Mayrant?
I must plead guilty. The old ladies of Kings Port, like American gentlefolk everywhere, keep family matters sacredly inside the family circle. But you see, had they not told Augustus, how in the world could I have told--however, I plead guilty.
Certain passages have been interpreted most surprisingly to signify a feeling against the colored race, that is by no means mine. My only wish regarding these people, to whom we owe an immeasurable responsibility, is to see the best that is in them prevail. Discord over this seems on the wane, and sane views gaining. The issue sits on all our shoulders, but local variations call for a sliding scale of policy. So admirably dispassionate a novel as The Elder Brother, by Mr. Jervey, forwards the understanding of Northerners unfamiliar with the South, and also that friendliness between the two places, which is retarded chiefly by tactless newspapers.
Ah, tact should have been one of the cardinal virtues; and if I didn't possess a spice of it myself, I should here thank by name certain two members of the St. Michael family of Kings Port for their patience with this comedy, before ever it saw the light. Tact bids us away from many pleasures; but it can never efface the memory of kindness. The Virginians
Romance The Virginian (1902) is Owen Wister's classic popular romance, and the most significant shaping influence on cowboy fiction. Its narrator, fresh from the East, encounters in Wyoming cattle country a strange, seductive and often violent land where the handsome figure of the Virginian battles for supremacy with Trampas and other ne'er-do-wells. His courtship of the genteel Vermont schoolteacher, Molly Wood, is a humourously observed battle of the sexes, demonstrating that the 'customs of the country' must eventually prevail. Rich in vernacular wit and portraying a romanticized escape from the decorum of the patrician East, The Virginian exudes a sense of redemptive possibility, drawing on Wister's experience of a summer spent on a Wyoming ranch in 1895. This edition includes Wister's neglected essay, 'The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher' (1895), a revealing companion to a novel that has disturbing undercurrents. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. 
