Owen Wister

The Virginian is a 1902 debut novel set in the Wild West by the American novelist Owen Wister. Describing the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, it helped establish the western novel as a literary genre. The unnamed protagonist in The Virginian, who courts a local schoolteacher and defers personal revenge while meting out justice to a cattle thief, set the tone for the rough but civilized cowboy, a prototype for scores of ensuing books,...

Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 - July 21, 1938) was an American writer and historian, considered the "father" of western fiction. He is best remembered for writing a biography of Ulysses S. Grant and the novel The Virginian, in which Wister created the archetypal cowboy.