Andy Adams (writer)

Andy Adams ( May 3, 1859 Thor Creek Township in Indiana; † September 26, 1935 in Colorado Springs, Colorado ) was an American writer who has shown in a series of books, the life of the cowboys in their daily lives very close to reality. Since he himself had been about fifteen years during the time of the great cattle business in Texas Cowboy, he knew whereof he wrote. When his best work, also regarded by him as, The Log of a Cowboy is true: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days, in which the story of a cattle treks in 1882 is told from Texas to Montana. The book falls far from the frame of the conventional Wild West novel, and is regarded as an important work of American literature itself.

Life demolition

"Our well-being was nothing; Men were to have cheap, but cattle cost money. "

Andy Adams was Irish- Scottish descent. In Thor Creek Township, a municipality in Whitley County, Indiana, he was born on the farm of his parents (Andrew and Elizabeth Adams). Along with two brothers, he grew up on here. After attending a rural primary school, he left home and worked for a time in a sawmill in Arkansas.

Around the year 1876 around he went to Texas and became a cowboy. It was the era of the great cattle treks on the trails from Texas to the north, and so there was a lot of work that had probably attracted him like so many others. Much later, he would not be allowed to come, because of the " Texas drive " walked slowly towards its end and much to blame were the ever continuing expansion of the railway network, which facilitated the transport of cattle and reduced-price, and less and less expectant open rangeland what forced to ever more circuitous route. - 1882 Andy Adams went on his first trail and has done that yet in the next eight years, so a few times.

In 1890 he gave up the cowboy life. He remained in Texas and continue operation in Rockport with a partner any business, but that was not very successful and had to be abandoned after two years. He then worked in the gold mines of Nevada and Colorado and moved to Colorado Springs in 1894, where he then probably started sometime serious writing.

1903 was published as his first book, The Log of a Cowboy, which he, as he thought, had written of the " hurricane deck of a horse from Texas ." In Germany it's already come out in 1907 under the title The Trail of the Wild West. Although it is a narrative fiction, the events during a cattle treks and also the world of cowboys are described so authentic that it is a unique source for the historian in this field in it. The Log of a Cowboy is not the stereotypical cowboy image as it has been drawn about by Owen Wister, a co-founder of the Wild West novel and in his book The Virginian, for example, like Andy Adams once observed critically, the cows are hardly mentioned. - In addition to his cowboy stories wrote Andy Adams also two youth books ( Well Brothers and The Ranch on the Beaver ). Some other stories and dramatic attempts have remained unpublished.

Except for two interruptions ( in Nevada from 1908 to 1909 and from 1920 to 1922 in Kentucky ), Andy Adams has always lived from 1894 until his death in 1935 in Colorado Springs. In Texas, where he traveled from time to time to do research for his stories and revive memories, he has been for the last time in 1918.

Bibliography

• Andy Adams: The Log of a Cowboy. A Narrative of the Old Trail Days, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1903
• Andy Adams: A Texas Matchmaker, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1904
• Andy Adams: The Outlet, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1905
• Andy Adams: Anthony Reed, cowmen, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1907
• Andy Adams: Cattle Brands, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1906
• Andy Adams: A cowboy told. From the time of the great cattle treks, with an afterword by Max Mittler, Manesseplatz Verlag, Zurich 1981
• Andy Adams: The trail in the wild west. From the diary of a cowboy, reprint of the original edition of 1907, published for American Studies, Wyk auf Foehr 2001