Western fiction

Western fiction is a genre of literature typicallyauthor Max Brand, who excelled at the western
set in the American Old West between the yearsshort story). The simultaneous popularity of
of approximately 1860 and 1900.Western movies in the 1920s also helped the
The Western got its start in the "penny dreadfuls"genre.
and later the "dime novels" that first began to beIn the 1940s several seminal westerns were
published in the mid-nineteenth century. Thesepublished including The Ox-Bow Incident (1940) by
cheaply made books were published to capitalizeWalter van Tilburg Clark, The Big Sky (1947) and
on the many fanciful yet supposedly true storiesThe Way West (1949) by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., and
that were being told about the mountain men,Shane (1949) by Jack Schaefer. Many other
outlaws, settlers and lawmen who were tamingwestern authors gained readership in the 1950s,
the western frontier. By 1900, the new mediumsuch as Luke Short, Ray Hogan, and Louis
of pulp magazines also helped to relate theseL'Amour.
adventures to easterners. Meanwhile,The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely
non-American authors like the German Karl Maydue to the tremendous number of westerns on
picked up the genre, went to full novel length, andtelevision. The burnout of the American public on
made it hugely popular and successful intelevision westerns in the late 1960s seemed to
continental Europe from about 1880 on, thoughhave an affect on the literature as well, and
they were generally dismissed as trivial by theinterest in western literature began to wane. In
literary critics of the day.the 1970s, the work of Louis L'Amour began to
The western in American literature began tocatch hold of most western readers and he has
emerge with the novels of James Fenimoretended to dominate the western reader lists ever
Cooper, particularly his Leatherstocking Tales. Butsince. George G. Gilman also maintained a cult
The Virginian by Owen Wister, published in 1902,following for several years in the 1970s and
is considered by many to be the pioneering1980s. Readership as a whole began to drop off in
"literary" western novel, containing the corethe mid- to late '70s and has reached a new low
element of a rugged individual who stick to histoday, and most bookstores, outside of a few
guns in the face of trouble, neglecting chances towestern states, only carry a small number of
simply walk away. This seeming bundle of clichesWestern fiction books. Nevertheless, several
was fresh and hugely popular in 1902, andWestern fiction series are published monthly, such
elements of this formula appear in most Westernas The Trailsman, Slocum, and Longarm.
stories ever since.Western authors have an organisation that
Popularity grew with the publication of Zanerepresents them called the Western Writers of
Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage in 1912. WhenAmerica, who present the annual Golden Spur
pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s,Awards.
western fiction greatly benefited (as did the