The Virginian

Owen Wister, considered the father of western fiction, was a novelist and biographer. He is best remembered for his novel, The Virginian, and his biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Originally from Philadelphia, Wister began spending summers in the western United States in 1885. He was fascinated with the West, and when he began writing, he set his fiction on the frontier. The Virginian is the novel that created the archetypal cowboy, and is often considered by critics to be the first cowboy novel. It was so well received that it went through 14 printings in 8 months.