Synopses & Reviews
From Hollywood films to novels by Louis L'Amour and television series like
Gunsmoke and
Deadwood, the Wild West has exerted a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of the United States. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, Christine Bold traces the origins and evolution of the western genre, revealing how a group of prominent eastern aristocrats-a cadre she terms "the frontier club" -created and propagated the myth of the Wild West to advance their own self-interest as well as larger systems of privilege and exclusion.
Mining institutional archives, personal papers, novels, and films, The Frontier Club excavates the hidden social, political, and financial interests behind the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier-club fiction, most notably Owen Wister's bestseller The Virginian, in relation to federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos); it casts new light on key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-figures such as Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist; and it considers the costs of the frontier-club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, women, and working-class white men.
An engaging cultural history that covers print culture, big-game hunting, politics, immigration, Jim Crow segregation, and environmental conservation at the turn of the twentieth century, The Frontier Club provides a welcome new perspective on the enduring American myth of the Wild West.
Review
A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2013
"Based on archival research as well as the rich body of secondary material pertinent to the topic, The Frontier Club adds several new layers of insight into those who produced the 'western' and those who, from the beginning, noted its serious limitations. This, too, is a story too important to ignore." --Journal of American Studies
"Bold does a more than adequate job juggling various complex connections to wave together a book that adds to and deepens a cultural history of the American West." --Panhandle-Plains Historical Review
"Superbly researched and written... It is refreshing to see women, African Americans, and Native Americans getting a fair shake in Bold's tale, and to watch her pull back the curtain on the racism and brutality that informed the era... Bold vividly restores vanishing historical impact of Westerns for the benefit of contemporary readers. Summing Up: Essential." --CHOICE
"Fascinating and engaging... Deftly written with engaging and illuminating examples, Christine Bold's The Frontier Club is an important contribution to the history of capitalism, to the influence of social networks on historical memory, and to the history of literary representations of the American West." --H-Net Reviews
"The strength of this study is its integration of many facets of American culture - business, technology, health, the arts, psychology, class structure, nature, and government - into a meaniful whole represented by the cowboy. That is quite an accomplishment." --Kansas History
Synopsis
The Frontier Club is Christine Bold's name for the network of eastern aristocrats who created the western as we now most commonly know it. At the turn of the twentieth century, they yoked this most popular formula to their own elite causes-from big-game hunting to conservation, immigration restriction to Jim Crow segregation-and aligned themselves with cattle kings and "quality" publishers. This book tells the story of that cultural sleight-of-hand. It delves into institutional archives and personal papers to excavate the hidden social, political, and financial interests in the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier club fiction in relation to the federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos) with which it was intimately connected; the centerpiece is Owen Wister's bestselling novel The Virginian. It casts new light on nine key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-in addition to Wister, the network included Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, Madison Grant, Caspar Whitney, Winthrop Chanler, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist. Bold also considers some of the costs of the frontier club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, white women, and non-elite white men. The book ends by briefly charting the frontier club's enduring impression on western movies.
About the Author
Christine Bold is Professor of English at the University of Guelph. She is the author of
Selling the Wild West, The WPA Guides and the editor of
The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Volume Six: US Popular Print Culture 1860-1920. Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
The Frontier Club Western: An Introduction
Frontier Clubmen
Vigilante Clubmen
The Virginian
Chapter 1: Boone and Crockett Writers
The Boone and Crockett Club, 1893
Boone and Crockett Clubmen
Theodore Roosevelt
George Bird Grinnell
Owen Wister
Winthrop Chanler
Madison Grant
Henry Cabot Lodge
Caspar Whitney
Frederic Remington
The Books of the Boone and Crockett Club
Shaping the Voice
Clearing the Enclave
Writing the Frontier Club Western
Lobbying the Federal Government
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Cowboys and Publishers
A Very Proper Philadelphian
Frontier Club Neurasthenia
A Man's Gotta Do . . .
Aristocrats Out West
Frontier Club Investments
The Cheyenne Club
Cowboys and Vigilantes
Showdown on Publishers' Row
Frontier Club Investments
The Frontier Club Western and the Literary Marketplace
Conclusion: The Frontier Club vs Alkali Ike
Chapter 3: Women in the Frontier Club
Frontier Club Women and Families
The Wister Women
Molly Wister
Women's Space in the Frontier Club Western
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Jim Crow and the Western
Wister: "white for a hundred years"
Roosevelt's Rough Riders
Remington: With the Eye of the Mind
Black Rough Riders Redux
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Immigrants and "Indians"
Vanishing Acts
Immigration Restriction
Owen Wister
Madison Grant
Another Hank
American Indian Assimilation
George Bird Grinnell
Jack the Young Frontier Clubman
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Outside the Frontier Club
Princess Chinquilla
Cheek by Jowl
Rewriting 1902
Conclusion: Frontier Club Fingerprints