BUFFALO BILL'S LEAP FOR LIFE or The White Death of Beaver Wash - with - THE JAMES BOYS IN CALIFORNIA by Anonymous; Stevens, D. W - 1965

Derby, Connecticut: Gold Star Books, 1965. 127 pp. Gold Star Book IL7-33. Edge and corner wear with an uncreased spine; some darkening on the reverse of the covers and around the edges of the text block. Both titles in a single volume: Buffalo Bill's Leap for Life from Buffalo Bill Stories; and The James Boys in California by D. W. Stevens from the Wide Awake series. The Western as an actual genre started in the penny dreadfuls of the late 1800s, which later became the dime novels. Published in June 1860, Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter is considered the first dime novel, though most of the dime novels romanticized the lives of real wild west characters from Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp to all the other famous and infamous people of the time, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, et cetera. When Zane Gray published Riders of the Purple Sage and when Clarence Mulford started his Hopalong Cassidy series, the Western became incredibly popular. And then the Western pulps started up in the 1920s, spawning such writers as Max Brand, Luke Short, Louis L'Amour and a host of others. And they thrived into the 1950s but were likely wiped out by television and the popular TV series of the time, such as Wanted Dead or Alive, Trackdown, Bonanza, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel and many, many more. The Western isn't nearly as popular as it once was, but people still like the genre. New Westerns are published or filmed every year but the roots are still back in the pulps and the dime novels.. First Printing - First Thus. Paperback. Very Good-. Book.