Wister frequently stayed at the Cheyenne Social Club
Owen Wister was born in Philadelphia in 1860, the son of physician Owen Jones Wister and Sarah (Butler) Wister, daughter of the actress Fanny Kemble. After graduating from Harvard in 1882, "Wister studied two years music in Paris but he gave up a musical career. He worked as a bank clerk in New York. Due to poor health, he spent some time in the West to restore his physical well-being. In 1885 he entered Harvad Law School, graduating in 1888. Wister practiced law in his home town Pennsylvania before devoting himself to a writing. In 1898 he married Mary Channing, a cousin, and they had six children. Wister had spent summers in the West, and on the basis of these experiences he wrote Western sketches. The first story, 'Hank's Woman,' appeared in Harper's, and launched his career as a writer. Beginning with his first encounter with Wyoming in 1884, he kept journals and notes, which were published in an edited form in WISTER OUT WEST (1958). In 1891, after a conversation in which the author and Roosevelt discussed the literary potential of his impressions of western life, Wister began writing his stories of America's last internal frontier. They paved the way for the novel THE VIRGINIAN: A HORSEMAN OF THE PLAINS (1902). The work was dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, and in later editions it had Frederic Remington's illustrations. The story of modest, quit hero, who is more comfortable with his horse than with other people, gained a huge popularity, and was later filmed by Hollywood three times. In The Virginian Wister created the image of the West that was heroic as well exotic. The story is set in the Wyoming territory during the late 1870s and 1880s. Courageous but mysterious cowboy known only as the 'Virginian' works as a foreman of a cattle ranch. He meets a pretty schoolteacher Molly Wood, who introduces him the works of Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare and Keats. However, their relationship is threatened by Trampas, who also works on the farm. The climatic gun duel between the two men is the first "showdown" in fiction. In the end Virginian marries Molly and rides with her in the mountains." (quoted from Petri Liukkonen)
