Virginian

Summary

Philadelphia born Owen Wister published this novel in 1902 and in doing so established the conventions of the Western. Although dime novels had already featured cowboys and their ways, the stereotype reached fruition with The Virginian . It is a story of natural justice and of the contrast between American East and West. The narrator sees exquisite beauty in the Wyoming landscape that, like the 'sublime' in the eighteenth century, makes the trivialities of "Fifth Avenue" and the like all the more explicit. "They live nearer nature and they know better", the narrator says of the townsfolk. Even so, the Virginian himself and all the major players in the novel are Easterners. Oddly, despite being responsible for the invention of the cowboy there are no cattle-working scenes. But this is really the tale of new land and the unknown, the name "cowboy" meaning far more than its component parts and standing for an attitude and a lifestyle.

Table of contents

• To the Reader
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36

Other Fiction classics

• Lady Chatterley's Lover — D.H. Lawrence
• Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Billy Budd — Herman Melville
• Ulysses — James Joyce
• Dubliners — James Joyce
• Little Women — Louisa M. Alcott