Owen Wister

Born in Philadelphia in 1860, Owen Wister studied at Harvard, where he became friends with Theodore Roosevelt. After traveling in the American West, he turned those experiences into fiction and nonfiction that helped shape how many readers imagined the frontier.

His best-known book, The Virginian (1902), became one of the most influential early Western novels. Wister also wrote stories, essays, and other books, often drawing on Western settings and on the social worlds he knew in the East.

He died in 1938. Although his name is most closely tied to one landmark novel, his work played a major part in establishing the Western as a lasting American genre.