George Frederick Ruxton – författare

In this classic of western Americana, George Frederick Ruxton, who died in St. Louis in 1848 at the youthful age of twenty-seven, brilliantly brings to life the whole heroic age of the Mountain Men. The author, from his intimate acquaintance with the trappers and traders of the American Far West, vividly recounts the story of two of the most adventurous of these hardy pioneers - Killbuck and La Bonté, whose daring, bravery, and hair-breadth escapes from their numerous Indian and ""Spaniard"" enemies were legend among their fellow-frontiersmen.With Ruxton, we follow Killbuck and La Bonté and their mountain companions - Old Bill Williams, ""Black"" Harris, William Sublette, Joseph Walker, and others - across the prairies and forests, west from picturesque old Bent's Fort, into the dangerous Arapaho country near the headwaters of the Platte. We share with them the culinary delights of their campfires - buffalo ""boudins"" and beaver tails - and hear from their own lips, in the incomparable mountaineer dialect, hair-raising stories of frontier life and humorous tales of trading camp and frontier post.Life in the Far West, then, is adventure extraordinary - the true chronicle of the rugged Mountain Men whose unflinching courage and total disregard for personal safety or comfort opened the Far West to the flood of settlers who were to follow. The breath-taking water colors and sketches, which depict with great detail many of the familiar scenes of the early West, were done by one of Ruxton's contemporaries and fellow-explorers, Alfred Jacob Miller.

More than a travel book, more than an autobiography, Ruxon of the Rockies is a rare and vivid account of a man who lived during a heroic age: George Frederick Ruxton lived among and wrote about the traders and trappers of the American West.Ruxton crammed a dozen lifetimes of adventure into his brief twenty-seven years. Leaving his native England in 1838, at the age of seventeen, he set out on endless journeys - fighting in the Carlist Wars in Spain, stationed with the British army in Ireland, hunting with Indians in Upper Canada, attempting to penetrate to the interior of Africa, and carrying out a mission for his government in Mexico and the American West.In all his travels, nothing won his heart so completely as the Rocky Mountains. With the awareness of a poet and down-to-earth nature of an explorer, Ruxton wrote of their awesome grandeur, bountiful wildlife, hardy mountain men, and their inexorable annihilation of the weakling. While on his way for a second, more extended visit to his beloved Rockies, Ruxton died in St. Louis.A rewarding literary experience, this volume is essentially Ruxton's autobiography. Sections on Africa and the one on Mexico and the Rocky Mountains appeared during Ruxton's lifetime, but earlier portions have never been published before.  Ruxton of the Rockies is illustrated with sketches from his notebooks and reproductions of the incomparable watercolors of Alfred Jacob Miller, a great Western artist of Ruxton's time.

George Frederick Ruxton was an explorer and adventurer extraordinaire. Born in England in 1820, he followed in his family’s footsteps and entered the military at the age of thirteen. He quickly became a decorated soldier, serving in Spain, where he fought for Queen Isabella II in the Carlist civil war and was made a Spanish knight at seventeen, as well as in Ireland and Canada. But the rigidity of military life was not for him. In 1843 Ruxton followed his wanderlust; he sold his commission and roamed freely for a season through the remote woods of southern Canada and northern New York, hunting and living off the land.Ruxton never forgot his travels through remote America, and, after journeying through Africa, he would return in 1847. Starting in Mexico and the new American southwest territories, Ruxton would go on to travel more than two thousand miles, finally reaching present-day Colorado. Upon returning to England, Ruxton, using the pen name La Bonté, would begin to detail his travels through articles under the title Life in the Far West.First published in book form in 1849, Life in the Far West describes the amazing true adventures of George Frederick Ruxton as he forges a path through the yet-untamed wilderness of a young America, seeing firsthand the relationships between the US Army and Comanche Indians and the incredible lifestyles of Colorado mountain men. With a literary style that makes it feel more like a novel than the true account it is, Life in the Far West is the compelling and ambitious account of a true explorer.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.