Owen Wister

The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister The Virginian is a 1902 novel by the American author Owen Wister, set in Wyoming Territory during the 1880's. It describes the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch and is considered the first true fictional western ever written, aside from short stories and pulp dime novels, though modern scholars debate this.

The foreman of a large cattle ranch on the Wyoming frontier lives by the honor code of the West even though it means helping lynch a friend or possibly losing the girl he is to marry