'Just choose what you have'

 

“When a man ain't got no ideas of his own, he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.” – Owen Wister

 

Born in Philadelphia in 1864, Wister was a Harvard classmate and close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and has often been called “The father of the Cowboy novel.” It was a title given to him after he wrote The Virginian, a book that not only spawned the Cowboy genre but also was made into several movies and a long-running TV series.

 

Wister started writing about the West in 1891 after half-a-dozen years of traveling to and living in Wyoming and the western Dakotas.    Like Roosevelt, Wister was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of the region.   In addition to Roosevelt he was lifelong friends with the great Western artist Frederic Remington, who he met near Yellowstone in 1893.  

The Virginian, written in 1902, is set during Wyoming’s 4-year Johnson County War between large and small landowners in north-central Wyoming, the area where Wister spent most of his time.  Wildly successful, the book was reprinted a remarkable 14 times in its first 8 months alone and has continuously been in print ever since.   All told, Wister wrote 8 novels, 13 nonfiction books – including one about his friendship with Roosevelt – and 6 collections of short stories.  He also authored numerous essays and poems, several plays and 6 operas.

 

Since 1991, The Western Writers of America have presented The Owen Wister Award to the “Book of the Year set in the American West.” This year’s award went to Craig Johnson, who writes the Longmire series and lives in the same Johnson County featured by Wister in The Virginian.

 

Wister, who died in 1938, said he felt “destined” to write about the West.  “When you can’t have what you choose,” he said, “you just choose what you have.”