Owen Wister

Owen Wister (* July 14, 1860 in German Town ( Pennsylvania), † July 21, 1938 in Kingston (Rhode Iceland ) ) was an American writer. He is a co-founder of the Wild West novel as a genre of American literature.

Life

Owen Wister was the son of Sarah and Owen Wister, Sr. of a patrician family from Philadelphia and so enjoyed a privileged childhood. His grandmother was the British stage actress Fanny Kemble. After school visits to Switzerland and in England, he studied at the prestigious St. Paul 's School in Concord (New Hampshire ), and later at Harvard University. There he began with contributions to the student satire magazine, The Harvard Lampoon his writing career and met his longtime friend and later President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt know.

1882-1884 he spent two years in Paris. After his return, he settled first in New York, where he was held in a bank job. In 1885 he began a second degree at Harvard Law School. His license to practice as a lawyer, he was awarded, 1888.

During this time, Wister began increasingly to deal with the American West. This topic corresponded entirely to the spirit of the time; the historian Frederick Jackson Turner transfigured in the influential essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893 ), the Frontier, so the white settlement Renze in the west, to the birthplace of the American mind and he claims to own freedom and self -assertion. Roosevelt put in his book The Winning of the West ( 1889-96 ) the significance of the westward expansion of the welfare of the American nation dar. While the "civilization " of the West progressed, ie the expulsion of the Native Americans, the white settlement, and the political organization of the Northwest Territories in U.S. states, to Wister made ​​to the Transfiguration of this vanishing world and impressed with his first novel the Virginian (1902; German the Virginians, 1955) the emerging during this time the myth of the "Wild West" decisive.

The Virginian is the story of a maverick cowboys in Wyoming in 1880, which holds in spite of the dominant Western fist right to his personal code of honor, and so on is all kinds of hardships. Was the novel in the United States have long school reading, it appears by today's standards rather than chauvinistic concoction with extremely reactionary tendency. In some other short stories Wister attacked the cowboy theme again, but devoted himself also and above all other circles theme. With Lady Baltimore (1906 ), he wrote about a nostalgic transfigured society novel about the better circles of the Southern States. Also Wister wrote some children's books.

1898 married Mary Channing Wister his cousin, with whom he had six children. She died in 1913.

Works (selection)

• Hank 's Woman
• The Virginian (Eng. The Virginians. Novel, 1955) ( filmed in the television series The Men from Shiloh )
• Lady Baltimore
• Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship
• Done In The Open ( poems)

German editions of the shorter tales:

• Stories from the adventurous life of the Wild West, Hamburg 1908
• The Apache raid, Berlin and Leipzig 1912
• The Pentecostal fire of tribulation, Lausanne 1916
• The medicine man of the Crow Indians. After a true story, Colorful Youth books (issue 123 ), Reutlingen 1927