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"If you
write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi
River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi,
it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to
it."
--Louis L'Amour
To download free e-texts of classic
western novels and journals belonging to the public domain, check out
the following sources:
Thalasson
Memoware
Authorama
Project_Gutenburg
Mountain
Men Journals
Classic
Reader
Questia
Site sponsored by
HowTheWestWasLoved.com
© 2006-2009 All rights reserved.
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We Love Westerns!
A great many readers love westerns. People all around
the world like to read books that help them identify with the Indian fighters on
the frontier, the homesteader on his farm, the cowboy, or the gunslinger in
the Old West.
We offer
a listing of western authors of novels set in the American West. Included are
books about American history, the Old West, and the western frontier, as
well as contemporary western fiction novels. We list print books
and those in digitized form. Here you
will find links to the best of western literature, including stories
about cowboys, rodeo stars, ranchers, and horsemen. Authors of classics
from Altsheler to Zane Grey are
listed.
In this directory, we
use a broad definition of "western," including contemporary
stories, historical fiction and even early American literature -- as
long as it has the flavor of the West. Any books about the west qualify
an author to be listed in this directory of writers.
Zane Grey --
On Writing
"In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift,
greedy age of realism, it seems there is no place for writers of
romance, no place for romance itself. For many years all the events
leading up to the great war were realistic, and the war itself was
horribly realistic, and the aftermath is likewise. Romance is only
another name for idealism; and I contend that life without ideals
is not worth living. Never in the history of the world were ideals
needed so terribly as now. Walter Scott wrote romance; so did
Victor Hugo; and likewise Kipling, Hawthorne, Stevenson. It was
Stevenson, particularly, who wielded a bludgeon against the
realists. People live for the dream in their hearts. And I have yet
to know anyone who has not some secret dream, some hope, however
dim, some storied wall to look at in the dusk, some painted window
leading to the soul. How strange indeed to find that the realists
have ideals and dreams! To read them one would think their lives
held nothing significant. But they love, they hope, they dream,
they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream in their hearts
just the same as others. We all are dreamers, if not in the
heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the meaning of life that
makes us work on.
"It was Wordsworth who wrote,
"The world is too much with us"; and if I could give the
secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it would be
contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has always
come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to setting.
In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how the
world is too much with them. Getting and spending they lay
waste their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful
life of the open!"
Zane Grey, from the Foreword of the book,
"To The Last
Man."
The Western Novel:
Part I: The Legendary Western Hero
Rosalie More
Howdy Pilgrims! Pull up your bedroll next to the
campfire and set a spell. Here y'are -- have a cup of steaming coffee
while I tell you about the Wild, Wild West and the Legendary Western
Heroes who tamed it. More . . . .
Part I: The Legendary Western Hero
Part II: Why Americans Love Westerns
Part III: Western Heroes in American Literature
Part IV: Dime Novels and Early Westerns
Part V: Authors of Popular Western Fiction
About the Author, Rosalie More
Articles about western lore may be submitted for possible
publication.
Contact: info @
westernauthors.com [no spaces]
Old Westerns!
Remember the old time movies and TV shows
starring Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Jack Elam, Sam Eliot, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and many others?
Take a walk down memory lane ...
Click
Here
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