OWEN WISTER - AUTOGRAPH QUOTATION SIGNED 07/16/1903 - HFSID 175026
Price: $320.00
OWEN WISTER
The author of the archetypal Western novel quotes
Shakespeare.
Autograph Quotation Signed: "Owen Wister/July 16. 1903/'To thine
own self be true./And it shall follow as the night the day/Thou canst not then
be false to any man.'", 4¾x2¼ ruled sheet. This quotation expresses so
well the heroic values of the classic Western hero whose legend Wister's story
helped create. The original quote, from the Danish courtier Polonius to his
son, Laertes, in Hamlet, may have been intended ironically by
Shakespeare. A tiresome list of platitudes from an old fool, it is more often
cited approvingly. 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. Mounting adhesive remnants on verso show through
faintly. Fine condition.
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