Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 - July 21, 1938) was an American writer of western novels. Owen Wister was born of old money in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a number of place names around Philadelphia can be traced back to the Wister family. He attended schools in Switzerland and Britain, and studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and Harvard University, where he was an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. He worked as a bank clerk in New York, New York. He suffered poor health, spending much time in the western states of America. In 1885 he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1888. Wister practiced law in his home town Pennsylvania before devoting himself to writing. In 1898 he married Mary Channing, his cousin, and had six children.
His Wild West writing is what made him famous. A friend of Theodore Roosevelt, he often hung out in Wyoming (then still fairly wild; the Johnson County War took place in 1892) to get away from Eastern life. His most famous work is The Virginian, the loosely constructed story of a cowboy who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War and taking the side of the large land owners.
Books and stories:
Hank's Woman The Virginian Lady Baltimore Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship Poetry:
Done In The Open
The Virginian (1929)
