| Western fiction is a genre of literature typically | | | | author Max Brand, who excelled at the western |
| set in the American Old West between the years | | | | short 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 be | | | | In the 1940s several seminal westerns were |
| published in the mid-nineteenth century. These | | | | published including The Ox-Bow Incident (1940) by |
| cheaply made books were published to capitalize | | | | Walter van Tilburg Clark, The Big Sky (1947) and |
| on the many fanciful yet supposedly true stories | | | | The 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 taming | | | | western authors gained readership in the 1950s, |
| the western frontier. By 1900, the new medium | | | | such as Luke Short, Ray Hogan, and Louis |
| of pulp magazines also helped to relate these | | | | L'Amour. |
| adventures to easterners. Meanwhile, | | | | The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely |
| non-American authors like the German Karl May | | | | due to the tremendous number of westerns on |
| picked up the genre, went to full novel length, and | | | | television. The burnout of the American public on |
| made it hugely popular and successful in | | | | television westerns in the late 1960s seemed to |
| continental Europe from about 1880 on, though | | | | have an affect on the literature as well, and |
| they were generally dismissed as trivial by the | | | | interest 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 to | | | | catch hold of most western readers and he has |
| emerge with the novels of James Fenimore | | | | tended to dominate the western reader lists ever |
| Cooper, particularly his Leatherstocking Tales. But | | | | since. 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 pioneering | | | | 1980s. Readership as a whole began to drop off in |
| "literary" western novel, containing the core | | | | the mid- to late '70s and has reached a new low |
| element of a rugged individual who stick to his | | | | today, and most bookstores, outside of a few |
| guns in the face of trouble, neglecting chances to | | | | western states, only carry a small number of |
| simply walk away. This seeming bundle of cliches | | | | Western fiction books. Nevertheless, several |
| was fresh and hugely popular in 1902, and | | | | Western fiction series are published monthly, such |
| elements of this formula appear in most Western | | | | as The Trailsman, Slocum, and Longarm. |
| stories ever since. | | | | Western authors have an organisation that |
| Popularity grew with the publication of Zane | | | | represents them called the Western Writers of |
| Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage in 1912. When | | | | America, who present the annual Golden Spur |
| pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s, | | | | Awards. |
| western fiction greatly benefited (as did the | | | | |