THE VIRGINIAN
First edition of the work that introduced a wider audience to the archetype of the cowboy, laying the groundwork for popular conceptions (and misconceptions) of the American West.
Very good plus.
Price: $1,250.00
THE VIRGINIAN
"Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back; a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat."
Encouraged to write about his Western experiences by his classmate Teddy Roosevelt, Owen Wister's THE VIRGINIAN was "an immediate success" upon its publication (Lambert). Wister, a Harvard alum from an upper-middle-class Philadelphia family, wrote about the American frontier not as dime-novel sensationalism, but as a place that could symbolically heal cultural rifts. His cowboy, the nameless VIRGINIAN, was "a cultural symbol that involved both our notions about a beneficent wilderness and our commitment to the values of civilization," a timeless figure that crossed the boundaries between "wild-man" and "gentle-man" (Lambert).
THE VIRGINIAN and his exploits captured the hearts and minds of Americans invested in forging unity from the tensions unresolved by the Civil War. Wister's Southern hero and his East Coast intellectual love interest, Molly, are emblematic of "a larger national project of reunification and reconciliation" in a time when "the North and South fed imitatively on each other's racist inclinations" (Kuenz). Despite the large percentage of Black cowboys who worked on the Western frontier, Wister's Wyoming is overwhelmingly white, a feature that would continue to influence this misconception and become a fixture of the Western genre.
THE VIRGINIAN has been adapted for the stage and screen several times, including as a 1914 silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and as a long-running NBC TV series. An important cultural touchstone.
Read more: Neal Lambert, "Owen Wister's Virginian: The Genesis of a Cultural Hero," Western American Literature vol. 6 no. 2.
The Object
New York: The Macmillan Company, (1902). Full title: The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. 7.5'' x 5''. Original tan cloth binding with red, black, and gilt titles and details. Black-and-white frontispiece with seven black-and-white plates. xiii, 504 pages followed by 3 leaves of ads. A bit of edgewear to binding, spine ends bumped with tiny split to top; occasional small spots of soil to leaves. Shows well.
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