Owen Wister

Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer. His novel The Virginian, published in 1902, helped create the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and built Wister's reputation as the "father of Western fiction." He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. The Western Writers of America renamed the Saddleman Award for best book of the year to the Owen Wister Award, and Mount Wister in Wyoming was named in his honor.

Early life and education

Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician raised at "Butler Place" which adjoined Belfied, the Wister family estate in Germantown. His mother, Sarah Butler Wister, was the daughter of Fanny Kemble, a British actress.

Wister attended boarding schools in Switzerland and Britain. He studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1878. He was a member of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter). Wister was also a member of the Porcellian Club, through which he became friends with Theodore Roosevelt. As a senior, Wister wrote the Hasty Pudding's then most successful show, Dido and Aeneas, whose proceeds aided in the construction of their theater. Wister graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1882.

He studied for two years at a Paris conservatory and wrote six operas. They were never produced and he gave up his dream of a career in music. He worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law; he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1888 and passed the bar in 1890. He practiced with a Philadelphia firm but was never truly interested in that career.