OWEN WISTER - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 10/11/1913 - HFSID 18890

OWEN WISTER
His novel The Virginia, the model for much fiction on the American West, was dedicated to his friend, Theodore Roosevelt.
ALS: "Owen Wister" on verso of integral leaf, 2p, 4¼x6¾, conjoined leaves. Philadelphia, no year October 11. On black-bordered paper to "My dear Mr. Mablie", in full: "It was pleasant to find your little line waiting here last Thursday. This week coming I shall be in New York for a day, and when I know what day, I'll telegraph you & then run the chance of finding you in Astor Place. But it will be for the pleasure of a chat - if you'll waste some of your time so on me - and not for literary schemes; I fear you'll find me useless in that way. The six months of idleness have put me back in work that should have been done by June, and is not yet begun! And to my own extreme regret I have had to renounce one pet plan in consequence, and decline two others I found here, one that would have been after my own heart entirely. All this I can bore you with better viva voce. Sincerely yours". Although earlier American writers had focused on the frontier, Owen Wister's novel, The Virginian (1902), established many of the archetypes of what became in the twentieth century the Western novel and hero (it includes, for example, the first showdown gun duel). Drafts of the novel had been read and corrected by Theodore Roosevelt, Wister's close friend and Harvard classmate. The TV series, The Virginian, was only very loosely based on Wister's novel. Many of Wister's other Western stories were illustrated by another classmate and fellow celebrant of the Old West, Frederick Remington. Wister (1860-1938) later wrote a book about his friendship with TR. Lightly soiled, mostly in blank margin below signature. Black border is lightly worn at mid-vertical fold. Fine condition.