THE RANGER

OR

THE FUGITIVES OF THE BORDER

BY

EDWARD S. ELLIS

Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

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Contents

Edward S. Ellis

The History of Western Fiction

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

Edward S. Ellis

Edward Sylvester Ellis was born on 11 April 1840 to the marksman and hunter, Sylvester Ellis, and his wife, Mary Ellis, in Geneva, Ashtabula County, Ohio. When Ellis was six, the family moved to New Jersey where Ellis attended school. This association with school and education lasted as Ellis worked as a teacher for a number of years, first at Red Bank, New Jersey, then later as a member of faculty at the state normal school in Trenton – where he had studied when he was younger. He then worked as a teacher at Raritan, New Jersey, then as a vice principal of a public school at Paterson, before becoming principal of one of the largest schools in Trenton. He followed this by becoming the superintendent of schools in the same city. He was a member of the Board of Education and in 1887 received his degree of Master of Arts from Princeton College. Ellis began writing during his time as a teacher, but continued working within the education system until the mid-1880s. After leaving education, he devoted his life to literature.

Ellis wrote throughout much of his life and had over 159 novels published in his name, as well as a number of other novels and articles that he published under a variety of pseudonyms. These pseudonyms included, among others: Captain Bruin Adams (under which he had 68 titles published), Emerson Rodman (ten titles), Lieutenant Ned Hunter (five titles), and Seelin Robins (nineteen titles). Ellis had his first poems published in Gleeson’s Pictorial in 1857. His novel, Dick Flinton, or Life on the Border appeared in the New York Dispatch as a serial in 1859, and reappeared later as Kent the Ranger in 1863 as a dime novel. During this time Ellis under contract to Beadle and Company for four novels a year.

The novel that brought Ellis to the public’s attention was Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier (1860) which galvanised the dime novel phenomenon. It was extensively advertised at the time and sold over 500,000 copies. 60,000 copies were sold within the first week of its release and it was rumoured to have been a favourite of Abraham Lincoln. Ellis was best known internationally for his Deerfoot novels which were read widely by young boys until the 1950s. They depict life at the beginning of the white settlement in America and the encounters and adventures of four travellers. Ellis’s other titles included: The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), The Rival Hunters (1875), and Bill Biddon, Trapper (1860). In the mid-1880s, Ellis moved away from children’s fiction and began writing more serious biographies, histories and persuasive pieces. These included his novel The Life of Colonel Davis Crockett (1884) which told the story of the speech Davy Crockett gave in opposition to the awarding of money to a naval widow.

Ellis was married twice. He married Anna M. Deane on December 25 1862 and with her he had one son, Willmott Edward Ellis, and three daughters. Anna and Ellis divorced in 1887, and Ellis married Clara Spaulding-Brown on November 20 1960. The pair had met previously as she was a novelist and had also worked on the staff of Golden Days when Ellis was an associate editor from 1878-1879. He also edited Public Opinion, a Trenton daily, from 1874-1875 and was the editor of the Boys Holiday, later The Holiday, from 1890-1891. Ellis was a prolific writer until his death on a vacation trip in Cliff Island, Maine on June 20 1916.

The History of Western Fiction

Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in the land to the west of that. His protagonists lived off the land, were loyal, free, skilled with weapons, and avoided civilised society as best they could. His most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, also idealised the Native American.

During the 1860s and 1870s, a new generation of Western writers appeared, such as Mark Twain (1835-1910) Roughing It (1872) and Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868). Both writers had spent time living in the west and continued to promote its appeal through their literature. Harte is often credited with developing many of the cult Western’s stock characters, such as the honest and beautiful dance hall girl, the suave conman and the honourable outlaw. These characters went on to be firm favourites in popular, mass produced Western fiction. At the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of people were undergoing the treacherous journey to the west to make a new life for themselves and the fictional stories and legends of heroes and villains who had survived in this wild landscape captured the imagination of the public.

Western novels became popular in England and throughout America through ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and Dime Novels. These appeared in the late 1800s and were texts that could be bought cheaply (for either a penny or a dime – ten cents) as they were often cheaply printed on a large scale by publishers such as Irwin P. Beadle. Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Ann S Stephens (1810-1886) is considered by many critics to be the first dime novel. These sensationalist dime and penny novels capitalised on stories of outlaws, lawmen, cowboys, and mountain men taming the western frontier. Many were fictional, but some were based on real heroes of the west such as Buffalo Bill (the scout, bison hunter and performer), Jesse James (the American outlaw, robber, gang leader and murderer) and Billy the Kid (the American gunfighter). By 1877, these Western characters were a recurring feature of the dime novel. The hero was often a man of action who saved damsels in distress and righted the wrongs of the villains that he faced. For this hero, honour was the most important thing and it was something that the dime heroes never relinquished.

In the 1900s, Pulp magazines helped relay these tales over to Europe where non-Americans also picked up the genre, such as the German writer, Karl May (1842-1912). Pulp magazines were a descendent of the dime novel and their content was largely aimed at a mass market. As their popularity grew, they were able to specialise and there were Pulp magazines devoted specifically to Westerns, such as Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, and Star Western. The popularity for these magazines and for Western films in the 1920s made the genre a popular phenomenon.

The status of the genre in the early twentieth century was also enhanced by particular novels by different writers. One of the most influential Western novels was The Virginians (1902) by Owen Wister (1860-1938) which was considered to be a ground breaking literary Western. Wister dismissed the traditional idea of the solitary pioneer conquering new lands and making a new life for himself, and replaced this traditional character with the cowboy. The cowboy was a mix of cultural ideals, such as southern chivalry, western primitivism and stout independence. These were characteristics that many Americans cherished. Wister contrasted the lawlessness of the West to the order and civilisation of the East. He introduced new characters, such as savages and bandits who attacked the more civilised Eastern characters. His cowboy heroes shared many features with the medieval knights – they rode horses, carried weapons, fought duals and valued their honour above all other attributes. Zane Grey’s (1872-1939) Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was also a popular Western novel. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote over ninety books which helped shape Western fiction. He changed Wister’s cowboy into a gunslinger who was feared by criminals and held in awe by other civilians. Other popular Western writers in this period include Andy Adams (1859-1935) whose titles include The Outlet (1905) and A Texas Matchmaker (1904), Edward S Ellis (1840-1916) who wrote Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier (1860) and The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868),