About Novelist Zane Grey

Zane Grey (1872-1939) was to the western novel what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was to detective fiction, churning out 89 novels about the American cowboy and the western frontier. His books were on the bestseller list 13 times between 1910 and 1924 and ranked in sales just behind the Bible and the McGuffey Reader.

An Easterner by birth, he grew up fishing and hunting in rural Pennsylvania. He was fascinated with the deserts of the Southwest and became well known as a world traveler and adventurer. He went on extensive hunting trips, packing in supplies by mule train and camping in the wilderness for months on end.

These sojourns in the wilds had a dual purpose. Grey made careful notes and picked up facts about trail living and met some interesting people along the way: guides, cowboys, cooks, mountain men, sharpshooters, Indians, sheepherders — many of whom reappeared as characters in his western sagas.

In the 1920s Grey fished for marlin off Tahiti, bonefish at Key West and tuna off the California coast. He wrote about the need to preserve the environment. He denounced over-fishing of rivers, the netting of salmon and sea-running trout, the clear-cutting of timber near spawning streams. Some of his best writing can be found in his magazine articles about hunting and fishing, later collected in book form (Tales of Fresh Water Fishing and The Best of Zane Grey, Outdoorsman, edited by George Reiger).

He is perhaps best known for his novel Riders of the Purple Sage, published in 1912. Set in Utah, it narrates the story of a lone gunman’s fight to save a Mormon woman from a mob of angry churchmen. His editor at Harper & Brothers was reluctant to publish it because he felt it might be offensive to some readers. Convinced that this was his best novel, Grey stormed into the publisher’s office and tossed the manuscript on his desk. Riders was subsequently published and became the most successful western novel of all time.

Larry Wells is a frequent contributor to HottyToddy.com and can be reached at lwells@watervalley.net.