Western fiction
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Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the
History
Pre-1850s
The predecessor of the Western in American literature emerged early with tales of the frontier. The most famous of the early 19th-century frontier novels were James Fenimore Cooper's five novels comprising the Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper's novels were largely set in what was at the time the American frontier: the Appalachian Mountains and areas west of there. As did his novel The Prairie (1824), most later westerns would typically take place west of the Mississippi River.[4]
The notable writer Washington Irving was inspired by Cooper and wrote tales of the American frontier beginning with A Tour on the Prairies which related his recent travels on the frontier. In 1834, he was approached by fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who convinced him to write a history of his fur trading colony in Astoria, Oregon. Irving made quick work of Astor's project, shipping the fawning biographical account Astoria in February 1836.
1850s–1900
The Western as a specialized genre got its start in the "
1900s–1930s
By 1900, the new medium of
Popularity grew with the publication of
1940s–1960s
In the 1940s several seminal Westerns were published, including
The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the tremendous number of Westerns on television. The burnout of the American public on television Westerns in the late 1960s seemed to have an effect on the literature as well, and interest in Western literature began to wane.[citation needed] In 1968 Charles Portis published True Grit, which became the most successful work of the era.
Western comics
Western novels, films and pulps gave birth to
The Franco-Belgian comic-series Lucky Luke by Morris (cartoonist) and René Goscinny is one of the most famous and estimated Western-comics in Europe.
The popular Western comic strip Red Ryder was syndicated in hundreds of American newspapers from 1938 to 1964.
1970s and 1980s
In the 1970s, the work of
Western readership as a whole began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s.[citation needed] A partial exception was an innovation,[citation needed] the so-called "adult western". As Robert J. Randisi puts it, "it's a western novel with sex in it. That's right, the cowboy has sex with women. A new idea? Probably not, but heretofore this had not been seen in western novels (certainly not by Max Brand, Zane Grey, Owen Wister or Louis L'Amour). What these books actually showed was that men and women really did have sex in the old west. (Back when I started the series a rigidly traditional western writer of my acquaintance insisted to me that "women did not have orgasms in the old west.")."[9]
1990s and 2000s
Readership of western fiction reached a new low in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and most bookstores, outside a few western states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books. Nevertheless, several Western fiction series are published monthly, such as
Organizations
Western authors are represented by the Western Writers of America, who present the annual Spur Awards and Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. The organization was founded in 1953 to promote the literature of the American West. While the founding members were mostly western fiction writers, the organization began getting a number of other members from other backgrounds such as historians, regional history buffs, and writers from other genres.
Western Fictioneers, founded in 2010, is a professional writers' group that encourages and promotes the traditional Westerns. It is the only professional writers' organization composed entirely of authors who have written Western fiction. Fans of the genre may join as patron members. The Western Fictioneers' annual Peacemakers competition awards prizes in many categories of Western writing.[11]
See also
References
- ISBN 978-3-96858-330-3.
- ISBN 978-85-7777-486-9.
- ISBN 978-1-000-03154-6.
- ISBN 978-85-7777-486-9.
- ISBN 978-1-118-88333-4.
- ISBN 0879724757. Retrieved September 13, 2015.
- ISBN 978-0739192245. Retrieved September 13, 2015.
- ISBN 0-89370-161-0.
- ^ "Piccadilly Publishing - J.R.Roberts Author Page". www.piccadillypublishing.org.
- ^ "Great Western Fiction Has Folded," The Tainted Archive (August 31, 2008).
- ^ Westernfictioneers.com
Bibliography
- Boatright, Mody C. "The Formula in Cowboy Fiction and Drama." Western Folklore (1969): 136–145. in JSTOR
- Davis, David B. "Ten-Gallon Hero." American Quarterly (1954) 6#2 pp: 111–125. in JSTOR
- Durham, Philip. "The Cowboy and the Myth Makers." The Journal of Popular Culture (1967) 1#1 pp: 58–62.
- Estleman, Loren D. The Wister trace: classic novels of the American frontier (Jameson Books, 1987)
- Fleming, Robert E (October 1979). The Dime Novel Western. Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association.
- Hamilton, Cynthia S. Western and hard-boiled detective fiction in America: from high noon to midnight (Macmillan, 1987)
- Jones, Daryl (c. 1978). The dime novel western. Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, Bowling Green State University. ISBN 0879720980.
- Jones, Daryl Emrys (January 1974). The Dime Novel Western: The Evolution of a Popular Formula. Michigan State University.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - McVeigh, Stephen. The American Western (Edinburgh University Press, 2007.)
- Marsden, Michael T. "The Popular Western Novel as a Cultural Artifact." Arizona and the West (1978): 203–214. in JSTOR
- Stauffer, Helen Winter, and Susan J. Rosowski, eds. Women and western American literature (Whitston Publishing Company, 1982)
- Witschi, Nicolas S. ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. (2011) excerpt
Further reading
- Bold, Christine. Selling the Wild West: Popular Fiction, 1860 to 1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
- Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1971, 1984.
- Erisman, Fred, and Richard W. Etulain, eds. Fifty Western Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982,
- Etulain, Richard W. Ernest Haycox and the Western. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.
- Etulain, Richard W., and Michael Marsden, eds. The Popular Western: Essays Toward a Definition. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1974.
- Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
- Folsom, James K. The American Western Novel. New Haven: College and University Press, 1966.
- Lamont, Victoria. "Big Books Wanted: Women and Western American literature in the Twenty-First Century." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 31, no.2 (2014): 311–326.
- Lee, Robert Edson. From the West to East: Studies in the Literature of the American West. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966.
- Meyer, Roy W. The Middle Western Farm Novel in the Twentieth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
- Rusk, Ralph Leslie. The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1926.
- Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum, 1992.
- Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
- Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. New York: Atheneum, 1985.
- Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
- Stegner, Wallace. The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.
- Taylor, J. Golden, ed. The Literature of the American West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
- Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Walker, Franklin. A Literary History of Southern California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950.