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Summary: An old-fashioned Western hero finds love!
Review: The handsome cowboy meets the Eastern schoolmarm who has been recruited to teach in Wyoming and the sweetest little love story this side of the Pecos ensues! Old-fashioned heroes and characters, some real Western drama, and a little humor, too. This is a wonderful story about the West in the late 1800's.
Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorites!
Review: The original western. Wonderful characters and a terrific
read!
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Summary: A Homoerotic Love Song to the American Cowboy
Review: The thinly-disguised passion of the anonymous male narrator for the eponymous hero of The Virginian makes this book one of the great underground homosexual love-stories of all time. If Wister's hero had only had the sense to give up his rather unconvincing romance with the frosty, insubstantial little schoolmarm, and turn to the one who loved and understood him as no other, literary history would have been changed utterly....Certain scenes, such as the Virginian's digesting of huge doses of nineteenth-century literature and Shakespeare at the behest of his fiancee, are fraught with unintentional hilarity. One wishes the duel with Trampas hadn't ended the book before the reader could learn what the cowboy critic thought of The Brothers Karamazov (or Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, for that matter.)
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Summary: Unsung classic, unsung hero. A unique character.
Review: The Virginian is a classic because of the superb characters who fill its pages. The protagonist, known only as the Virginian, embodies a code of manly virtue. He is unique. Without Mary's civilized purity or the Virginian's wild perfection, the book would be a dry, uninteresting Western, full of stereotypical cowboys swaggering around with their pistols on their hips. Instead of a Buffalo Bill, Wister gives us a young man who loves Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and who does unpleasant things because he must, not because he enjoys them. I really enjoyed this book.
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Summary: An Image of a Cowboy
Review: The Virginian is a wonderful story full of adventure and romance! The book is written from the perspective of the Virginian's "city-boy" friend, and the two enjoy several exciting escapades. One of the main conflicts in the story is between the Virginian and cattle-rustler/murderer Trampas. Throughout the story they are locked in combat, Trampas desperately trying to make the Virginian look bad and the Virginian trying to catch him before he stirs up more trouble. Enter Miss Molly Wood, dainty school teacher from the East with a family history and a mind of her own. Deciding this is the girl for him, the Virginian sets off on a comical wooing. A real western complete with a shootout, The Virginian is a thoroughly enjoyable book that keeps you turning the page and wondering what will happen next.
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Summary: If Jesus was a cowboy
Review: The Virginian is the model for westerns. It's the landmark. Besides being a very good western it is very good literature. You will find it in the literature section of the bookstores. The Virginian shows us the model American man. The novel wraps this character up in a mystical shroud. The Virginian is motivated by ?. Maybe harmony, Maybe synchronicity. He moves at the last possible moment and uses the least amount of force to get his task done. Not out of slackness in character but quite the contrary, he can be slack because he is so efficient.
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Summary: a classic showing its age
Review: There can be no doubt of this : All America is divided into two classes,--the qualify and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but hangs. It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL EQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little mere artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight. -Owen Wister, The Virginian A friend of Theodore Roosevelt, to whom he dedicated this novel, Owen Wister is considered the father of the Western. The Virginian has been filmed at least five times and was voted the greatest Western of all time. Even if you've never read the book or seen one of the movies, you're more than likely familiar with the one great line : "When you call me that, smile!" All of that said, it has not worn as well as some other classic novels. It's influence, particularly in establishing the idea of a code of the West, is undeniable, but it just doesn't read all that smoothly. It suffers from several significant flaws : the romance which occupies the center of the novel is both too reserved and too idealized; the author uses a woefully awkward dialect to render the Virginian's speech; and is affected by a too delicate sensibility about the rough justice that is meted out. This last may well be the product of some Eastern embarrassment over the still wild nature of the West, but it is also a wee bit dandified. There's a very amusing review at Amazon which claims that this is an unacknowledged gay classic. I don't know that I'd go that far, but I take the reviewer's point that the true love in the book is between the narrator and the Virginian, and that the schoolmarm is mostly annoying. Likewise, the narrator betrays a certain squeamishness throughout which at least borders on the effete. It's still a book worth reading, if for no other reason than that it spawned one of the most popular genres in all of literature and the movies. There are also several asides in which Wister delineates the rough moral code which would become so familiar in the many Westerns to follow. But the prospective reader should be prepared for a novel which is showing every year of its age. GRADE : B-
Rating:
Summary: a classic showing its age
Review: There can be no doubt of this : All America is divided into two classes,--the qualify and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but hangs. It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL EQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little mere artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight. -Owen Wister, The Virginian A friend of Theodore Roosevelt, to whom he dedicated this novel, Owen Wister is considered the father of the Western. The Virginian has been filmed at least five times and was voted the greatest Western of all time. Even if you've never read the book or seen one of the movies, you're more than likely familiar with the one great line : "When you call me that, smile!" All of that said, it has not worn as well as some other classic novels. It's influence, particularly in establishing the idea of a code of the West, is undeniable, but it just doesn't read all that smoothly. It suffers from several significant flaws : the romance which occupies the center of the novel is both too reserved and too idealized; the author uses a woefully awkward dialect to render the Virginian's speech; and is affected by a too delicate sensibility about the rough justice that is meted out. This last may well be the product of some Eastern embarrassment over the still wild nature of the West, but it is also a wee bit dandified. There's a very amusing review at Amazon which claims that this is an unacknowledged gay classic. I don't know that I'd go that far, but I take the reviewer's point that the true love in the book is between the narrator and the Virginian, and that the schoolmarm is mostly annoying. Likewise, the narrator betrays a certain squeamishness throughout which at least borders on the effete. It's still a book worth reading, if for no other reason than that it spawned one of the most popular genres in all of literature and the movies. There are also several asides in which Wister delineates the rough moral code which would become so familiar in the many Westerns to follow. But the prospective reader should be prepared for a novel which is showing every year of its age. GRADE : B-
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Summary: This is a great book
Review: This book is not as well known as it once was, but it is a wonderful classic. The drawings are exquisite. The original version was illustrated by Charles M. Russell before he became famous.
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Summary: Integrity Defined
Review: This is one of my favorite books. I just finished reading it for the second time. The Virginian is a man's man, a man of honor and integrity, a man of resolute character loved by all. The cowboy's life of honor is witnessed in the book, with dashes of adventure, suspense, humor and a romance all the way through with the school marm. Definitely the archetypal hero and epitome of the American cowboy.
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