1. Owen Wister's father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician raised at "Butler Place" which adjoined Belfied, the Wister family estate in Germantown.
20 Facts About Owen Wister
1. 2.
Owen Wister studied at St Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1878.
3.
Owen Wister was a member of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon.
4.
Owen Wister was a member of the Porcellian Club, through which he became friends with Theodore Roosevelt.
5.
Owen Wister studied for two years at a Paris conservatory and wrote six operas.
6.
Owen Wister worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law; he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1888 and passed the bar in 1890.
7.
Owen Wister practiced with a Philadelphia firm but was never truly interested in that career.
8.
In 1882, Owen Wister started his writing career with the publication of The New Swiss Family Robinson, which parodied the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson.
9.
Owen Wister traveled to the American West to improve his health due to an illness that caused him hallucinations, headaches, and vertigo.
10.
In 1891, Owen Wister began to write fictional stories of western life based on the people he met and the stories he heard.
11.
Owen Wister traveled to the West for almost every summer over the next 15 years to gather additional material for his books.
12.
In 1904 Owen Wister collaborated with Kirke La Shelle on a successful stage adaptation of The Virginian that featured Dustin Farnum in the title role.
13.
In 1906, Owen Wister published the novel Lady Baltimore which was named after the Lady Baltimore cake served to him in Charleston, South Carolina.
14.
Owen Wister was said to have been so enamored with the cake that he used it as the namesake of his novel.
15.
Owen Wister was a member of several literary societies, a member of The Franklin Inn Club, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University.
16.
Owen Wister was an associate member of the Boone and Crockett Club and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society.
17.
Owen Wister built an estate in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, named Crowfield, and died there on July 21,1938.
18.
Owen Wister was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
19.
Near a house that Owen Wister built near La Mesa, California, but never occupied due to his wife's death, is a street called Owen Wister Drive.
20.
Owen Wister was admitted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2010.