Portland Public Library

The frontier club, popular westerns and cultural power, 1880-1924, Christine Bold

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-282) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The frontier club

bibliography

798437855

Christine Bold

popular westerns and cultural power, 1880-1924

"From Hollywood films to novels by Louis L'Amour and television series like Gunsmoke and Deadwood, the Wild West has exerted a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of the United States. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, Christine Bold traces the origins and evolution of the western genre, revealing how a group of prominent eastern aristocrats -- a cadre she terms "the frontier club"--Created and propagated the myth of the Wild West to advance their own self-interest as well as larger systems of privilege and exclusion. Mining institutional archives, personal papers, novels, and films, The Frontier Club excavates the hidden social, political, and financial interests behind the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier-club fiction, most notably Owen Wister's bestseller The Virginian, in relation to federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos); it casts new light on key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten -- figures such as Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Frederic Remington -- while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist; and it considers the costs of the frontier-club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, women, and working-class white men. An engaging cultural history that covers print culture, big-game hunting, politics, immigration, Jim Crow segregation, and environmental conservation at the turn of the twentieth century, The Frontier Club provides a welcome new perspective on the enduring American myth of the Wild West."--Publisher's website

The frontier club western: an introduction : Frontier clubmen ; Vigilante clubmen ; The Virginian -- Boone and Crockett writers : The Boone and Crockett Club, 1893 ; Boone and Crockett Clubmen: Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Owen Wister, Winthrop Chanler, Madison Grant, Henry Cabot Lodge, Caspar Whitney, Frederic Remington ; The books of the Boone and Crockett Club: Shaping the voice, Clearing the enclave, Writing the Frontier Club western, Lobbying the federal government ; Conclusion -- Cowboys and publishers : A very proper Philadelphian: Frontier club neurasthenia, A man's gotta do ... ; Aristocrats out west: Frontier club investments, The Cheyenne Club, Cowboys and vigilantes ; Showdown on publishers' row: Frontier club investments, The frontier club western and the literary marketplace; The frontier club vs. Alkali Ike; Conclusion -- Women in the frontier club : Frontier club women and families ; The Wister women ; Molly Wister ; Women's space in the frontier club western ; Conclusion -- Jim Crow and the Western : Wister: "white for a hundred years" ; Roosevelt's Rough Riders: The black Rough Riders, Whitening the Rough Rider ; Remington: with the eye of the mind ; Black Rough Riders Redux: Tearing a piece off the flag, "These cats was the original posse" ; Conclusion -- Immigrants and "Indians" : Vanishing acts ; Immigration restriction: Owen Wister, Madison Grant, Another Hank ; American Indian assimilation: George Bird Grinnell, Jack the young frontier clubman ; Conclusion -- Outside the frontier club : Princess Chinquilla ; Cheek by jowl ; Rewriting 1902 ; Conclusion