Details

Title

The Virginian

Sub Title

a horseman of the plains

Author

Wister, Owen

Publication Date

1902

Publisher

The MacMillan Company

Place of Publication

New York

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute.

Donor

Donated by Donna Jane Campbell.

Note

On July 19, 1903, just after a visitor left the Macneill house, Montgomery spent an afternoon reading. She selected three new titles, from different genres and styles. “I read ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Darrell of the Blessed Isles’ and ‘The Pit.’ The Virginian was very good and had an ending so idyllic that it hurt. The perfect happiness of Mollie and her Virginian was really insulting. Darrell rather bored me. The Pit was strong and exciting, but brutal and rather crude of thought. But it is a rank waste of time to be criticizing the books of the day. They amuse and pass time pleasantly and that is all that is really expected of them. They are not under any obligation of immortality” (‘The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. II, pp 77-78). ‘Darrell’ is a coming of age story about a boy raised in the country (author Irving Bacheller was a mentor to Stephen Crane, author of the ‘Red Badge of Courage’.). ‘The Pit’ is a novel of stock speculation and modern business (see the copy on the Bookshelf here). ‘The Virginian’ was a groundbreaking western romance by Owen Wister. Wister grew up in New England, attended Harvard, and became friends with Theodore Roosevelt. When his health began to fail, a doctor suggested he head to the American west for fresh air and fewer crowds. On his travels, he started gathering and writing stories, publishing a serialized version of what would become ‘The Virginian’ in ‘Harpers Monthly’. The titular hero is a cattle rancher who defends his herd, romances the local school teacher, and eventually must duel his enemy. The book was an instant bestseller, paving the way for a host of other western stories and authors like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. While Montgomery may have been right about the lack of “immortality” for two of the books she read that day, this one has never been out of print.

Genre

novel

Type of Item

contemporaneous