western stories
Tales of gunslingers
Western stories are fiction set in the American Old West, typically featuring cowboys, outlaws, frontier towns, and conflicts between settlers and Native Americans.
The genre dominated popular fiction in the early-to-mid twentieth century through pulp magazines, novels, and films: He grew up on western stories and dreamed of becoming a cowboy.
The setting usually spans roughly 1850 to 1900, emphasizing rugged individualism, gunfights, and moral codes of the frontier.
- gold rushMass migration seeking ore
- dime novelsCheap sensational 19th-century fiction
- cowboyMounted cattle herder
- manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
- schoolmarmFemale teacher, often strict
sheriff · justice · outlaw · horse thief · wanted poster · revenge · pulp magazines · ghost towns · cattle drives · dusty trail · mining camps · freedom · lawlessness · prairies · redemption · gunslinger · six shooter · heroism
- boys' booksadventure tales, mystery tales, mystery novels, survival tales, hero tales
- Bret HarteClarence
- Gilded Age LiteratureMark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, The Gilded Age, Huckleberry Finn
western storiesscience fiction
Speculative fiction with technological themes
space opera · cyberpunk · contemporary fiction · dystopian fiction · high fantasy
western storiesscience fiction
Speculative fiction with technological themes
space opera · noir fiction · romance novels · fantasy fiction
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