Selling the Wild West: Popular Western Fiction, 1860-1960

by Christine Bold

Popular Western Fiction, 1860-1960: the fiction factory, dime westerns, pulp westerns, the formula and the disappearing frontier, escaping the pulps: Grey, Brand, Haycox, the last few spaces: LeMay, Schaefer, :'Amour, anti-western westerns

234 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1987

About the author

Professor Christine Bold is a research fellow at the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph in Canada. Her research interests include popular print culture, the memorializing of violence against women, and public funding of the arts. She also teaches Scottish literature.

Reviews

[Jessica DeWitt]

Bold's argument is interesting, but she doesn't give any interesting evidence to support it. She basically argues that different authors used different techniques when writing their novels, which proves that they were writing against the conformities of the western genre. However, this does not seem unique at all, but rather a natural occurrence when one writes a book, obviously writers are going to write slightly differently from one another. She also doesn't demonstrate how this separates the western from any other mass-produced literary genre, such as the romance or mystery. Lastly, she does nothing to tackle the movement of the western formula to outer space in late twentieth century sci-fi novels, the omission of which helps prove her argument, which seems rather negligent on her part.

[Nicholas]

Interesting overall, but somewhat repetitive and dry in tone.