The Virginian A Horseman of the Plains (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Wister, Owen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199554102 ISBN 13: 9780199554102

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2009

Synopsis

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.
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About this title

Review:

An excellent edition. / Rhys Williams, Warwick University

From the Back Cover:

This is the classic novel of the American West, which served as a model for thousands of later novels and films.

It is a story of ranch life and cowboy living at the turn of the century. The hero of the novel, the "Virginian", the only name by which he is known, has left his native state at an early age to try his fortunes in the western country. After roughing it along the way, he settles on Judge Henry's cattle ranch in Wyoming, where the owner makes him his right-hand man. The Virginian is strikingly handsome, twetny-seven years old, and, though unversed in the ways of the world and ignorant as to book learning, he has character and personality that inspire respect from all who know him. He manages to force on a turbulent community his idea of law and order-- "getting the drop" on an enemy, vigilante committees, and lynch law.

The novel recounts his adventures, including his romantic initiation at the hands of Molly Wood, the Vermont girl who became a western school techer. And it introduces him to Trampas, the legendary villain who is the prototype of the "bad guys" of future western novels and films.

"The Virginian" has been filmed three times, most memorably with Gary Cooper, and also became a long-running television series.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0199554102
• ISBN 13: 9780199554102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 351
• Editor: Shulman Robert