Listing the Best Western books, authors and movies of all time is very difficult. There are so many great ones to choose from and it is all very subjective. One person’s opinion may vary greatly from anothers. However, if you are western fan like myself, you will surely find some of your favorites on each list.The Western genre takes place usually in the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The Wild West novels first started coming out in the 1860s with the publication of the first dime novel “Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter”. These books glorified the western frontier and its characters and were a huge success. Many of these novels create fictionalized adventure stories about real life people such as Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp.
Best Western Books – 1900s
Two of the best western books of all-time came out in the early 1900s ‘The Virginian’ by Owen Wister and Zane Grey’s ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’. These two grew the popularity of the western genre tremendously and were the backbone to the enormous popularity of the Pulp Magazines in the 1920s. Western movies also took off during this time.
The mid 1900s saw authors including Louis L’Amour, Ray Hogan and Luke Short gaining readership. Many great westerns were still being published in this era including ‘Shane’ by Jack Schaefer. The genre hit it’s peak in the 1960s, mostly due to the number of Westerns that were on television. This was probably also the reason that Westerns saw a slow decline. The public was being saturated by Western stories and characters and were looking for something new. Louis L’Amour pretty much dominated the late 1900s Western literature landscape. However, that’s not to say that there weren’t any good Westerns written in this era. 1985 saw the publications of masterpieces ‘Lonesome Dove’ by Larry McMurty and ‘The Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy. Today, the Western genre still has a sizable following, but it will probably never reach the popularity it once did in the 1960s. There are some excellent books still being written and more readers becoming interested in the genre due to some excellent movies and tv shows that have come out in the last decade like HBO’s Deadwood and more recently AMC’s Hell on Wheels. I hope you enjoy our lists at Best Western Books and feel free to comment.
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We love westerns and wanted to share our favorites with the world. Please feel free to comment and share which ones you have enjoyed.