About the Author

Owen Wister (1860–1938) was an American writer and is considered the father of Western fiction. He is best remembered for his novel The Virginian, although he never wrote about the West afterwards. Willa Sibert Cather (1873–1947) was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours. Zane Grey (1872–1939) was one of the United States' most popular writers of western fiction. His best-selling book was Riders of the Purple Sage, published in 1912. Max Brand was the pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust (1892–1944), an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns.