The Virginian

The Virginian, Western novel by Owen Wister, published in 1902. Its great popularity contributed to the enshrinement of the American cowboy as an icon of American popular culture and a folk ideal.

A chivalrous and courageous but mysterious cowboy known only as “the Virginian” works as foreman of a cattle ranch in the Wyoming territory during the late 1870s and ’80s. The gunplay and violence that are inherent in his frontier code of behaviour threaten the Virginian’s relationship with a pretty schoolteacher from the East. The novel’s climactic gun duel is the first “showdown” in fiction. It also introduced the now-classic phrase that the Virginian utters when pushed to the limit by an adversary: “When you call me that, smile!”