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| | Age-defying 'Virginian' no problem for contemporary readers - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review |
 | | In a letter "To the Reader" placed at the front of "The Virginian," first published in 1902, Owen Wister told his readers wistfully that the book they were about to read described "a vanished world," that of the cowboy in the Wyoming Territory between 1874 and 1890. |
 | | With "The Virginian," Wister created a country of mythic proportions, the West (he called it Cattle Land), and a character worthy of inhabiting it, the idealized cowboy. |
 | | Above all, Wister set the conventions that have been followed, with modifications, in everything from books to TV to comics for 100 years: the wandering hero, strong and silent, who defends the weak and helpless; honest and vital, independent and self-reliant, he is capable of gentleness but never unmanly. |
| www.pittsburghlive.com /x/pittsburghtrib/s_68307.html (1094 words) |
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