Volume 11 , Issue 18

1904 Edition - The Virginian by Owen Wister

David and I went to an auction Saturday morning in Alva, Oklahoma and found and bid successful on a 1904 edition of "The Virginian." This 1904 edition of "The Virginian" was entitled "The Horseman of the Plains." The publisher information stated: "New York The Macmillan company, London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1904.

It was copyright 1904 by Macmillan company. It also mentioned, Set up, electrotyped and published April 1902. Reprinted June twice, July four times, August three times, September twice, November twice, December twice, 1902; January, February, August November 1903; February 1904; special edition in paper covers, May, December 1904. Norwood Press, J. S. Cushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass, USA."

Owen Wister was also author of "Red Men and White" - "Lin Mclean" - "U. S. Grant: A biography." There was a dedication: "To Theodore Roosevelt -- some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, on stands new-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave to remind you of their author's changeless admiration."

Owen Wister was born July 14, 1860, in Germantown, PA, as an only child of a wealthy Germantown family. The future novelist first showed promise as a musician, though his father directed him into a career in banking and then in the law. Plagued with neurasthenia, Wister took a variant of the ?rest cure? of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, traveling to Wyoming on Mitchell?s advice.

From these experiences, Wister began to write short stories of the West. His Western writing culminated in the 1902 publication of The Virginian, the most popular Western ever. During his career, Wister would publish another novel, many short stories, an opera, three biographies, and a number of political pieces.

Owen Wister died at his summer home in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, in 1938. -- Owen Wister
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