Westerns

Victoria Lamont is a professor of English at the University of Waterloo. She is the author of The Bower Atmosphere: A Biography of B. M. Bower (Bison Books, 2024) and the coauthor of Judith Merril: A Critical Study.

“Westerns does far more than add women and stir; it is a tremendous gift to scholarship, restoring women’s contributions to American literary history and laying a more accurate and inclusive foundation for future work.”-Jennifer S. Tuttle, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature "Compelling. . . . A valuable read for all those interested in the intersections of gender and culture in early twentieth century America."-Michigan Historical Review "Westerns: A Women's History is a readable excursion into female authors, their experiences, and their perspectives, within an important genre. In unmasking and then undoing female erasure from the beginnings of the American Western novel, Lamont makes important points and deftly defends them. Her book is enjoyable and significant."-Thomas E. Simmons, Journal of American Culture "Westerns: A Women’s History introduces a whole new set of woman authors and texts to be included in the study and teaching of Western American literature as well as a new and compelling origin narrative of the Western literary genre."-Randi Tanglen, English: Journal of the English Association "In recovering legacies among western women writers, Lamont herself achieves major stature as a feminist scholar of the West."-Cathryn Halverson, Western American Literature "The outsize presence of the West in the American cultural imaginary persists. Lamont, with verve and compelling insight, shows how women have always been a part of this storytelling realm."-Annette Koh, Ancillary Review of Books "Westerns is recommended reading not only for fans of classic Westerns and of feminist literary recovery, but indeed for all readers interested in the history of the American West and the origins of contemporary feminisms."-Emma Morgan-Thorp, Canadian Literature "For more than a century, the mythic western cowboy has been consistently hypermasculine. Victoria Lamont's Westerns: A Women's History prods the boundaries of this image while debunking the myth that literary westerns were consistently written by men."-Cynthia Culver Prescott, South Dakota History "Lamont's work rests upon an impressive amount of archival work in little-known ephemera. . . . [Westerns] introduces a new group of works that may be taught on courses focused on the West or inserted into other contexts and critical discussions, causing us to reorganize, question, and revise our existing frameworks."-Nicole Tonkovich, Legacy "Westerns: A Women's History resurrects the work of well-known western women authors during an era when their stories of strong female characters in the frontier West enjoyed popular readership."-Renee M. Laegreid, Western Historical Quarterly