Western Novels and Novelists
The Most Famous Scene In Any Western
Max Brand
Zane Grey
James A. Janke
Louis L'Amour
Jack Schaefer
Luke Short
Owen Wister
The Most Famous Scene In Any Western:
(The villain Trampas has just casually called the Virginian
a son-of-a-bitch during a poker game.)
The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on the
table, holding it unaimed.
And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded
almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual,
so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued
his orders to the man Trampas:- "When you call me that,
smile!" And he looked at Trampas across the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if
somewhere the bell of death was ringing.
From Owen Wister's The Virginian, 1902
Faust was born in Seattle, Washington. He was a prolific writer, writing under many pen names. His best known pen name was Max Brand, under which he wrote many fast-paced, romantic Western novels. He also wrote spy novels, crime novels, and doctor novels. He wrote more than 100 books. He was killed during WWII in Italy while working as a war correspondent.
Destry Rides Again, 1930
Singing Guns, 1938
Danger Trail, 1940
Calling Dr. Kildare, 1940
He was born Pearl Zane Gray in Zanesville, Ohio. (He later switched his name to Zane Grey, because people thought he was female.) Zanesville was named after Grey's great grandfather, Ebenezer Zane, who distinguished himself in the American Revolution and was given the land that would become the city of Zanesville.As a boy Grey developed a love of fishing and the outdoors that lasted all his life. At fourteen he wrote his first story called, "Jim of the Cave." Unfortunately his father burned the manuscript when he discovered that Grey had been commandeering the family pots and pans for cave dwelling adventures of Grey and his teenage friends. Grey read a lot, including Robinson Crusoe, Last of the Mohicans, and Our Western Border. He also read a lot of dime novels about Indians and border warefare and such. Grey was only a mediocre student, and it was his wife who taught him much about grammar and introduced him to authors such as Victor Hugo, Poe, Kipling, Darwin, and Tennyson.
His father was a dentist, and Grey served a kind of apprenticeship under his father. He developed quite a talent for baseball as a young man and pitched on many city teams and in an amateur league. He won a baseball scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1896 with a degree in dentistry. He practiced dentistry from 1896 to 1903 in New York City. He continued to play baseball. In 1902 he had a fishing article, "A Day on the Delaware," published in Rereaction magazine, and it whetted his appetite to become a writer.
In 1903 he published the first of his Ohio River Trilogy, Betty Zane, paying for the publication himself, as he could not find a publisher interested in the book. The book was part fiction and part history, and it included his grandfather, Colonel Zane, and the colonel's sister, Betty. In the novel, as in real life, Betty Zane saves a fort from Indian attack by running through a hail of bullets and arrows to return with some badly needed gunpowder to the fort defenders.
The publication of Betty Zane led Grey to quit dentistry to try writing full time, and it also inspired him to marry Lina Roth, whom he called Dolly, in 1905. In 1906 he found a royalty publisher for his second novel, Spirit of the Border, and for his third, The Last Trail. In 1908 he published a book called The Last of the Plainsmen which was about the Western adventures of man named "Buffalo" Jones, whom he had met in New York. It took a long time for Grey to find a publisher for the book, but that lack of success did not deter Grey.Jones had taken Grey out West to show him what to write about, and the trip inspired Grey.
In 1910 Grey published The Heritage of the Desert. The book earned Grey a comfortable income. In 1912 he published his most popular book, Riders of the Purple Sage. And he quickly became a very successful writer. In 1918 with the publication of The U.P. Trail Grey had finally decided to write only Westerns, of "the beauty and color and mystery of great spaces, of the open, of Nature in her wild moods."
He loved to write. His main strength was description, but he was weak in characterizations. And he was also a prolific writer. He wrote so many manuscripts that his publishers could continue publishing his works long after he died. And he published many Western and baseball short stories, about a hundred fishing articles, and nine books about fishing. His wealth earned from writing allowed him to travel around the world to fish in exotic places - and collect material for more fishing articles and books. He died on October 23, 1939.
Grey was an enormously successful writer. As late as 1973 his books were still selling a million copies a year. Between 1982 and 1988 Riders of the Purple Sage sold 260,000 copies. Even today Zane Grey reprints are readily available in bookstores.
Betty Zane, 1903 (Ohio River Trilogy)
The Spirit of the Border, 1906 (Ohio River Trilogy)
The Last Trail, 1909 (Ohio River Trilogy)
The Heritage of the Desert, 1910
Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912
Desert Gold, 1913
The Light of Western Stars, 1914
The Rustlers of Pecos County, 1914
The Lone Star Ranger, 1915
The Rainbow Trail, 1915
The Border Legion, 1916
Wildfire, 1917
The U.P. Trail, 1918
The Desert of Wheat, 1919
The Man of the Forest, 1920
The Mysterious Rider, 1921
To the Last Man, 1922
Wanderer of the Wasteland, 1923
The Call of the Canyon, 1924
Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon, 1924
The Thundering Herd, 1925
The Vanishing American, 1925
Under the Tonto Rim, 1926
Forlorn River, 1927
Nevada, 1928
Wild Horse Mesa, 1928
Fighting Caravans, 1929
The Shepherd of Guadaloupe, 1930
Sunset Pass, 1931
Arizona Ames, 1932
Robber's Roost, 1932
The Drift Fence, 1933
The Hash Knife Outfit, 1933
The Code of the West, 1934
Thunder Mountain, 1935
The Trail Drive, 1936
The Lost Wagon Train, 1936
West of the Pecos, 1937
Majesty's Ranch, 1938
Raiders of Spanish Peaks, 1938
Knights of the Range, 1939
Western Union, 1939
30,000 on the Hoof, 1940
Twin Sombreros, 1941
Stairs of Sand, 1943
Shadow on the Trail, 1946
Valley of Wild Horses, 1947
Rogue River Feud, 1948
The Deer Stalker, 1949
The Maverick Queen, 1950
The Dude Ranger, 1951
Captives of the Desert, 1952
Wyoming, 1953
Lost Pueblo, 1954
Black Mesa, 1955
Stranger on the Tonot, 1956
The Fugitive Trail, 1957
The Arizona Clan, 1958
Horse Heaven Hill, 1959
Boulder Dam, 1963
Janke was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was a house painter. When he was four years old his family moved to Watertown, Wisconsin and he went through elementary school there. When he was ten he started writing stories. When he was eleven the family moved back to Milwaukee. His mother became an elementary school teacher. He attended junior high, senior high, and the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in Milwaukee, obtaining a degree in chemistry in 1965. He went to Minnesota and earned a PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1970. He did two years of postdoctoral research at a biochemical institute in Austin, Minnesota. It was there that he started seriously trying to write for publication, trying his hand at short stories without success. He moved to Michigan and became a chemistry professor. He moved to a chemistry teaching position in South Dakota in 1978. In 1980 he published his first novel, a Western, for Dell.
Life events interfered with his writing for a time after that. He returned to school and obtained an MBA in Finance from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He returned to South Dakota to teach again, but this time in finance. In 1992 he published his second novel, another Western, for Avalon Books. He continued to publish for Avalon.
Janke travels frequently throughout the West, and he has collected a large library on Western lore and history. He and his two children call their home the Broken Wheel Ranch. A silver-painted good luck horseshoe is nailed above the front door.
Jeremiah Bacon, 1980
McHenry's Last Shootout, 1992
A Tin Star for Braddock, 1992
Blood on the Wind River Mountains, 1993
Winter Kill, 1994
Last Boat to Fort Benton, 1994
Last Stage to Laramie, 1995
He was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in Jamestown, North Dakota. His father was a veterinarian, a lover of horses and dogs, a sturdy athlete who taught his three sons to box. His mother kept up the family home, tended a garden as was known as an avid reader and a great storyteller. The family had a 300-book library, and young Louis read avidly. He also frequented the city library. He read books ranging from Shakespeare to Zane Grey, from Charles Dickens to Jack London- he loved to read. The family fell on harder times in the 20s, and they moved to the southwest in 1923. At that time Louis left home, at the age of 15, not wanting to be a burden to the family.
From that time on he went through an amazing string of jobs and experiences, all valuable for the future writer. He skinned cattle in Texas, went to sea and lived in the Far East, served on an East Indian schooner, was a professional boxer, longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, fruit picker, gold prospector, and a tank officer in WWII.
After the war ended L'Amour settled in Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a writer of Westerns, then a very popular reading fare in America, though he also tried detective fiction. He published many short stories in the years 1946-1950. In 1950 he published his first novel, Westward the Tide. He published four Hopalong Cassidy books between 1950 and 1954 under the pen name Tex Burns. He used the pen name Jim Mayo to publish two other books Yellow Butte in 1953 and Utah Blaine in 1954. In 1953 he published Hondo, which became his best-selling novel. It was quickly made into a movie. By 1983 sales of Hondo had reached 2,300,000 and still going.
L'Amour became America's most popular author. All of his novels, and he wrote over 100, are still in print. Total sales have topped 225,000,000. Between 1953 and 1971 thirty of his novels were turned into movies.
In 1982 he was awarded the National Gold Medal by Congress and in 1984 the Medal of Freedom. In 1972 he had been awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by Jamestown College in his hometown.
L'Amour always considered himself to be "just a storyteller, a guy with a seat by the campfire." His novels are known for their authenticity and accuracy, their descriptions, their wide-ranging lectures, particularly about Western American history, their endless tidbits of advice, their excitement, and their entertainment. Readers ignore the haphazard composition and flaws that demonstrate his claim of never revising his stories.
L'Amour died on June 10, 1988 in Los Angeles.
Westward the Tide, 1950
Hopalong Cassidy and the Riders of High Rock, 1951 (As Tex Burns)
Hopalong Cassidy and the Rustlers of West Fork, 1951 (as Tex Burns)
Hopalong Cassidy and the Trail to Seven Pines, 1951 (As Tex Burns)
Hopalong Cassidy: Trouble Shooter, 1952 (As Tex Burns)
Hondo, 1953
Crossfire Trail, 1954
Heller with a Gun, 1954
Kilkenny , 1954
Showdown at Yellow Butte, 1954 (As Jim Mayo)
Utah Blaine, 1954 (As Jim Mayo)
To Tame a Land, 1955
Guns of the Timberland, 1955
The Burning Hills, 1956
Silver Canyon, 1956
Last Stand at Papago Wells, 1957
The Tall Stranger, 1957
Sitka, 1957
Radigan, 1958
The First Fast Draw, 1959
Taggart, 1959
Flint, 1960
The Daybreakers, 1960 (Sackett Family)
Sackett, 1961 (Sackett Family)
Shalako, 1962
Killoe, 1962
Lando, 1962 (Sackett Family)
High Lonesome, 1962
How the West Was Won, 1963 (based on screenplay by J.R. Webb)
Fallon, 1963
Catlow, 1963
Dark Canyon, 1963
Hanging Woman Creek, 1964
Mojave Crossing, 1964 (Sackett Family)
Kiowa Trail, 1965
The High Graders, 1965
The Key-Lock Man, 1965
The Sackett Brand, 1965 (Sackett Family)
Kid Rodelo, 1966
Kilrone, 1966
The Broken Gun, 1966
Mustang Man, 1966 (Sackett Family)
Matagorda, 1967
The Skyliners, 1967 (Sackett Family)
Down the Long Hills, 1968
Chancy, 1968
Conagher, 1969
The Empty Land, 1969
The Lonely Men, 1969 (Sackett Family)
The Man Called Noon, 1970
Reilly's Luck, 1970
Galloway, 1970 (Sackett Family)
Brionne, 1971
Under the Sweetwater Rim, 1971
Tucker, 1971
North to the Rails, 1971
Callaghen, 1972
Ride the Dark Trail, 1972 (Sackett Family)
Treasure Mountain, 1972 (Sackett Family)
The Ferguson Rifle, 1973
The Quick and the Dead, 1973
The Man from Skibbereen, 1973
The Californios, 1974
Rivers West, 1974
Sackett's Land, 1974 (Sackett Family)
Over on the Dry Side, 1975
The Man from the Broken Hills, 1975 (Sackett Family)
The Rider of the Lost Creek, 1976
Where the Long Grass Blows, 1976
To the Far Blue Mountains, 1976 (Sackett Family)
Borden Chantry, 1977
Sackett's Gold, 1977 (Sackett Family)
The Mountain Valley War, 1978
Fair Blows the Wind, 1978
Bendigo Shafter, 1978
The Iron Marshal, 1979
The Proving Trail, 1979
The Warrior's Path, 1980 (Sackett Family)
Lonely on the Mountain, 1980 (Sackett Family)
Comstock Lode, 1981
Milo Talon, 1981
The Cherokee Trail, 1982
The Shadow Riders, 1982
The Lonesome Gods, 1983
Ride the River, 1983 (Sackett Family)
Son of a Wanted Man, 1984
The Walking Drum, 1984
Passin' Through, 1985
Jubal Sackett, 1985
Last of the Breed, 1986
West of the Pilot Range, 1986
A Trail to the West, 1986
The Haunted Mesa, 1987
The Sackett Companion, nonfiction, 1988
The Education of a Wanderin' Man, autobiography, 1989
Louis L'Amour Page, Hell's Canyon Trail (Tomas David Hood)
Schaefer was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His father was a lawyer, his mother a homemaker. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1929, and studied at Columbia University for a year. He then joined United Press as a reporter and office man. He was the assistant director of education at the Connecticut State Reformatory from 1931-38, but worked mostly on the staffs of various newspapers from 1932 through 1949, including the New Haven Journal-Courier, Baltimore Sun, and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot among others. From 1949 on he made his living as a writer.
His first novel, Shane, had a major impact on the Western genre; it has been called one of the best Westerns ever written. He had not been West when he wrote Shane but had relied on histories, diaries, and newspapers. It is the story of a boy's growing attachment to a gunfighter trying to outrun his past but who becomes drawn into the struggle between farmers and a cattleman. The story was made into a successful movie in 1953 starring Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur. Monte Walsh was also made into a movie, in 1970, as were six other stories of his.
Schaefer died in 1991 in Santa Fe, NM.
Shane, 1949
First Blood, 1953
The Canyon, 1953
Company of Cowards, 1957
Old Ramon, 1960
The Plainsman, 1963
Monte Walsh, 1963
The Great Endurance Horse race, 1963
Stubby Pringle's Christmas, 1964
New Mexico, 1967
Mavericks, 1967
Luke Short (Frederick Dilley Glidden)
Frederick Dilley Glidden was born on November 19, 1908 in Kewaunee, Illinois. His father died in 1921; his mother then became an English teacher in Kewaunee High School and later Dean of Women at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois in Urbana for two and a half years and then transferred to the University of Missouri at Columbia to study journalism.
Following graduation in 1930 he worked briefly on five different daily newspapers, became a trapper in Canada, moved to new Mexico to be an archeologist's assistant, and got married on June 18, 1934. After reading some Western pulp magazines and trying deperately to escape unemployment he tried his hand at writing Western fiction. He sold his first short story in April of 1935. He adopted the pen name of Luke Short. (There was a real Western character named Luke Short, but it is unclear whether Glidden knew about him or not.) He sold his first novel, Feud at Single Shot, in 1935.
In the 1930s he published fourteen novels as well as many short stories. He started writing for the movies in the 40s. Poor eyesight kept him out of the service in WWII, but he served for one year with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC starting in 1943. During these years he developed a strong writer/agent relationship with Marguerite E. Harper, who aided him greatly in his career.
After WWII he established a lucrative relationship with paperback publishers and also found his peak Hollywood years. In 1948 alone four Luke Short novels appeared as movies. In 1947 he moved to Aspen, Colorado. The 1940s were a banner year for Glidden.
In the 1950s his production of Western novels fell off, and he was troubled by uncertainties, discontent, and a resistance to the role in which he increasingly found himself. He had to contend with literacy piracy and plagiarism, all of which proved frustrating. He also was frustrated in a variety of business deals and artistic ventures in stage and TV.
The 1960s started with the heavy blow of the accidental death of his son James at Princeton. He searched for new literary paths, but by the mid-60s had settled into a routine of summers in Aspen, winters in Arizona, and the steady production of Western novels. His loyal agent Harper died in 1966. In 1969 he received the Levi Strauss Western Writers of America award.
In the 1970s Glidden produced six more Western novels, despite increasing trouble with his eyes. He dictated much of his work to a secretary. In 1974 he won the Western Heritage Wrangler award. He developed throat cancer and died of it on August 18, 1975. His ashes are buried in Aspen.
The Feud at Single Shot, 1935
The Branded Man, 1936
The Man on the Blue, 1936
Marauders' Moon, 1937
King Colt, 1937
Brand of Empire, 1937
Bold Rider, 1938
Savage Range, 1938
Raiders of the Rimrock, 1938
Hard Money, 1938
Bounty Guns, 1939
War on the Cimarron, 1939
Dead Freight for Piute, 1939
Bought with a Gun, 1940
Barren Land Showdown, 1940
Raw Land, 1940
Gunman's Chance, 1941
Hardcase, 1941
Ride the Man Down, 1942
Sunset Graze, 1942
And the Wind Blows Free, 1943
Ramrod, 1943
Coroner Creek, 1945
Fiddlefoot, 1946
Station West, 1946
High Vermilion, 1947
Vengeance Valley, 1949
Ambush, 1948
Play a Lone Hand, 1950
Saddle by Starlight, 1952
Silver Rock, 1953
Rimrock, 1955
The Whip, 1956
Summer of the Smoke, 1958
First Claim, 1960
Desert Crossing, 1961
Last Hunt, 1962
The Some-Day Country, 1963
First Campaign, 1965
Paper Sheriff, 1965
The Primrose try, 1966
Debt of Honor, 1967
The Guns of Hanging Lake, 1968
Donovan's Gun, 1968
The Deserters, 1969
Three for the Money, 1970
Man from the Desert, 1971
The Outrider, 1972
The Stalkers, 1973
The Man from Two Rivers, 1974
Trouble Country, 1976
Owen Wister was born into a wealthy, aristocratic, Philadelphia family. His childhood was highly regimented under his mother's guidance. From the age of 10 he spent most of life at boarding schools. He showed a talent for music, and that was his first love. At Harvard he met and became friends with many members of America's establishment, including Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. He was an excellent student, graduating summa cum laude Phi Beta Kappa in 1882. His father, a physician, forced Wister out of a promising career as a composer. He worked for a short time in a bank and hated it. He entered Harvard Law School.
Always sickly, in 1885 he visited Wyoming for his health. It was the first of 15 trips he would make out West. In the meantime he graduated from Law School and began work for a law firm. He continued to dabble in music and writing. In the summer of 1891, back in Wyoming, he felt the urge to write Western fiction. In 1892 two Western short stories of his were published. He immediately quit the law firm.
Wister continued to write and publish Western short stories. In 1897 his first novel Lin McLean, a Western, was published. In 1898 he got married. In April 1902 The Virginian was published. It was an immediate huge bestseller. It made him independently rich. Even today it is readily available in bookstores. The Virginian is often considered the prototype Western novel.
In 1906 he published Lady Baltimore, which was a novel of Charleston, SC manners. Over the years he also published biographies, histories, and short stories. He was active in politics. His beloved wife died in 1913. Wister died in Rhode Island in 1938. He was buried in Philadelphia.
Lin McLean, 1897
The Virginian, 1902
Lady Baltimore, 1906
[Novels, Novelists, and Short Fiction Page]
June 20, 1998