Post by Staff on Jun 16, 2009 0:31:06 GMT -6
The Western got its start in the "penny dreadfuls" and later the "dime novels" that first began to be published in the mid-nineteenth century. These cheaply made books were published to capitalize on the many fanciful yet supposedly true stories that were being told about the mountain men, outlaws, settlers and lawmen who were taming the western frontier.
By 1900, the new medium of pulp magazines also helped to relate these adventures to easterners. Meanwhile, non-American authors like the German Karl May picked up the genre, went to full novel length, and made it hugely popular and successful in continental Europe from about 1880 on, though they were generally dismissed as trivial by the literary critics of the day.
Movies:
Made in the 1960s
Made in the 1970s
Made in the 1980s
Made in the 1990s
Made in the 2000s
TV Shows:
Gunsmoke
The Lone Ranger
Have GUn, Will Travel
Bonanza
The Virginian
Wagon Train
Maverick
The Roy Rogers Show
Rawhide
Little House on the Prairie
Books:
List of Western Authors
