Frederic Remington: Selected Letters

by Allen P. Splete (Editor), Marilyn D. Splete (Editor)

Frederic Remington (1861-1909) is one of the best-known chroniclers of the final moments of the Old West. A painter and sculptor, a magazine and book illustrator and a novelist, Remington captured all facets of the frontier spirit in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Many have admired his vivid pictures of cowboy, Indian, and Cavalry life out west in the days of Indian wars and great cattle drives, but few know that Remington was a great and prolific letter-writer - and an inveterate doodler. His letters are those of a busy man - impatient with words when a sketch will do; negligent with spelling, punctuation, and grammar; guilty of incomplete sentences and thoughts left unfinished - but fascinating in their revelations of the mind-workings of an important American artist.the letters start when Remington was just a boy in military school, follow him through numerous trips out west, to Europe, to Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and they end just days before his early death. Divided into seven chronological groupings, each section is preceded by an introduction to the period covered and to the events in Remington's life. When called for, each letter, or string of letters, is introduced by a bridge that provides helpful background for understanding the letters and fully identifies Remington's wide range of correspondents. Care has been taken through footnotes to explain puzzling references and to help the reader fully comprehend the artist's pithy, even rowdy, prose. The book also contains selected replies from Remington's correspondents, so one is often treated to a lively exchange from both sides.The letters represent all elements of Remington's multifaceted life and range from notes to relatives to thoughtful exchanges with President Theodore Roosevelt. There are also many letters to and from Owen Wister, Poultney Bigelow, and Francis Parkman, as well as correspondence with General Nelson Miles and other prominent figures in government, and to Cavalry Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke and the widow of George Armstrong Custer. A skillful selection from major repositories all over America, this is the first major collection of Frederic Remington letters - many of them illustrated with never-before published sketches by the artist.

512 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1988