WHEN THE PURITANS set sail to cross the Atlantic, they were not going to a small, manageable island. Their destination was a continent, a new world. Their mission, as described with the bias of European civilization, was to establish a beachhead, a first settlement on the beginning edge of a land that was enormous, mysterious, frightening, and challenging. Clearly, the territory later called the American West was going to play a major role in the development of the nation they hoped to establish.

      The Puritans had little knowledge of what lay beyond their foothold on the New England coast, but early explorers had told of vast lands, strange natives, and incredible variety. The continent to the west of Plymouth and Jamestown, with its millions of undeveloped acres, added a massive physicality to the Puritan adventure in religious and political freedom.

      As religion receded from politics and democratic capitalism developed, the West provided opportunities for the poor and temptations to the exploiter, thus making the American experiment a realistic testing ground for democracy. A chapter in history began to unfold, a chapter characterized by such materials as inspire myth-makers. Both marvelous and terrible, the development of the West came to be symbolized in the American mind by pioneering, Indian wars and cattle drives, by the talismanic figure of the cowboya merging of Hispanic and Anglo traditionsby the heroic yet shameful railroad story, by miners, farmers, and loggers; and, at the end of the trail, in the promised land of California, there was a pot of gold. Back east, White House policies and Congressional debates often centered on the lands and riches of the West. From colonial times to the present day, recognition of the importance of the West to American history has been clear and continuous.

      The importance of western literature as a part of our national literature, however, has not been established. With professors and readers of history, the frontier has always been a respected topic. With professors and readers of literature, to mention frontier stories is to evoke automatic thoughts of popular stereotypes. While the term "western history" may suggest Thomas Macaulay, Francis Parkman, Washington Irving, Frederick Jackson Turner, Henry Nash Smith, Bernard DeVoto, and Richard Hofstadter, the term "western literature" suggests for most such names as Owen Wister, Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, and various Hollywood actors from Tom Mix to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

      The contributing authors of A Literary History of the American West have avoided the polemical trap of a special pleading and concentrated on presenting and analyzing their assigned topics. Yet one of the major underlying purposes of A Literary History of the American West is, by demonstration rather than defensiveness, to support the ongoing introduction of western literary riches to readers interested in American literature, culture, and history.

      Admittedly, as always, there are problems in the court of literary evaluation. Those who study the literature of the American West tend to believe there is an entrenched prejudice in favor of minor novels and mediocre poems written amidst the cultural prestige of England or New England and a prejudice against excellent novels and poems written about the harsh plains of Nebraska or the unprestigious deserts of Nevada. Still, the West has produced no William Faulkner, no giant with enough original power to make prejudicial rankings collapse; and, regrettably, some attempts to defend the worth of serious western literature have been strident attacks on the eastern establishment or somewhat sentimental praise of the local because it is local.

      Since the founding of the Western Literature Association in 1966, however, the attitude of teachers and critics of western literature has been characterized by a disinterest in proselytizing and a confidence in their chosen field of study. The belief, stated simply, is that the literature of the American West, although handicapped by association with Hollywood horse operas and stereotypical paperbacks sold in bus stations, includes a large body of first-rate literary art. Western literature of quality, much of it unknown to the reading public, honors the dramatic invitation of western history. The American West plays an important role in the history of the nation; western literature, as demonstrated by A Literary History of the American West, plays an important role in the literature of the nation.

      The editorial problem, in fact, has not been how to find western litera ture of quality but, rather, how to organize and present an enormous and remarkably varied body of such literature. The first step, obviously, was to gather the troops, a group of scholar-critics with a variety of knowledge equal to the task. The Western Literature Association and its journal Western American Literatureprovided the forum necessary for identifying and organizing over seventy scholars with specializations that include major writers of the American West, regional literatures and historical periods, a wide range of genres and literary methods, and literatures writtenor spokenin languages other than English.

      Gathering an appropriate group of scholars turned out to be less diffi cult than conceptual questions about the project itself. The history of the American West has been defined by groups conscious of their own history but too often unaware or unappreciative of any other history. Anglo pioneers, for example, tended to think of themselves as moving into a new world, that is, one not characterized by their notion of civilization; and yet up ahead were unknown millions of indigenous citizens, many with an oral tradition of power and sophistication. Moving into a supposedly new world, the Anglo pioneer was actually moving into a very old world. Likewise, the oversimplification of "red" versus "American" ignores long-established Hispanic civilizations in the Southwest and in California, the influence of French trappers and missionaries, Scandinavian developments in north central America, German communities established in Texas and throughout the West, and the stories of blacks, Asians, and literally dozens of other ethnic groups.

      The assumption that the American West was settled by Anglo pioneers moving out from gateways such as Independence, Missouri, in fact, needs reconsideration in the light of theories which emphasize the importance of the largely Hispanic movements from the south and the importance of largely Scandinavian movements following a northern route into the Dakotas and surrounding territories. Western literature, being concerned with what happened and with what various people thought was happening, moves around in history and the history of consciousness in ways that are difficult for the scholar to map.

      The editors have also had to face the fact that regionalism, from the beginnings to the present day, is intrinsic to the best of western literature as well as to the mediocre and, often, the worstthe most formulaic. Thus the editors confronted an old paradox: literary art tends to achieve universal significance by devotion to a specific locale, a region. Homer, according to Hamlin Garland, was a regionalist. If Garland's example of a universal-regionalist seems extreme, then Henry David Thoreau and William Faulkner will make the case for him. The problem of a regional literature ambitious for national and international recognition is, in the present instance, acute.

      Among numerous other editorial problems, at least one requires mention. Just as regional, chronological, and ethnic headings do not provide a neat shape for the literary historian, so does the essential term, western, refuse to cooperate with the scholar seeking clarity. Definitions in terms of geography, themes, subject matter, or the residence of the authors have all proved unsatisfactory; and attempts to discover a distinctively western style or vision, while rewarding, are not definitive. The best definitions, perhaps, are studies in practical criticism which invite further analysis rather than campaign for an end to analysis.

      As the Table of Contents makes clear, the editorial decisions are a series of compromises. The beginning, certainly, is "Native Oral Traditions," even though the concerted and ongoing study of Indian literature is a fairly recent enterprise.

      Other beginnings are explored in essays on the development of various genresincluding poetry and dramaand in essays on types of prose sometimes associated with culture or history rather than literary art. Nature essays, for example, are a necessary topic for study because they challenge our theoretical distinctions between art and non-art and often capture that sense of place, of land, which is for many the very soul of western literature. Folklore-and this is true for other literaturesis often the raw material of formal art; and gunfights and cowboy movies, a sore point for many serious western artists, are entangled in the minds of writers and readers even if only as destructive myths in need of purgation. And popular culture, of course, regardless of artistic merit, is a revealing and important field of study.

      The arrangement of Part Two, although easier to outline than to defend, seemed required by the recurrent emphasis on specific locale. Just as Faulkner devoted himself to his "postage stamp" of the world and found it inexhaustible, so have many western writers found a complete world in the Southwest, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains. The fourth regional division, the Far West, may be a legitimate category for its consistent defiance of all categories. Historically, the Far West was often the goal of western expansion, and yet it was also the end of expansion, the place where pioneers turned back from the ocean and faced the East. Oregon Territory loomed in the national psyche as the ultimate in newness, and yet California, the neighboring state, was an old and established civilization. A paradise of fertile land and mineral wealth, but also a land of corruption and violent injustice, the coast as paradox has inspired a number of literary explosions.

      Part Three, "Rediscovering the West," is a shift in organizational principle required by the fact that so much of the ethnic literature of the American West has received even less recognition than novels and poems by Anglo writers. The editorial rationale here lies in the history of improving consciousness rather than the history of the literature itself. Belatedly, there is a widespread effort to recognize the art of ethnic minorities and a burst of energy both in criticism and in creativity.

      "Present Trends," a sub-division of Part Three, returns to the principle of chronology; but the decision, while a compromise, is not arbitrary. There is, both in the West and in the nation generally, a small press renaissance in progress. Major publishers, in part because new owners are less willing than their predecessors to work for literature as well as profit, are widely believed to be uninterested in taking a chance on a new writer or on a veteran who has never had a best seller.

      A full description of the small press business has not been written; but it is well known that while some small presses do not last the season of their birth, many endure with surprising tenacity. In major cities, and often in small towns, an enormous number of active and serious publishers and writ ers constitute a national small press industry. Although important, the trend is not exclusive, of course. As made clear in each of several chapters, many western novelists and even a few poets do enjoy a happy relation with a major publishing firm, nature writing continues to be an important genre, and there are quality western films made in major studios.

      In the Epilogue, Martin Bucco describes the course of western literary criticism from its beginnings to the present. He does for western criticism, in short compass, what George Saintsbury (History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe) and René Wellek (History of Modern Criticism: 1750 1950) have done, on a monumental scale, for comparative criticism.

      The need for a literary history of the American West was first expressed quite casually, over coffee, by various members of the Western Literature Association. Afterwards, during a plenary session, the idea met with immediate and total agreement. The significance of the apparently innocent inception of this literary history is that scholars and critics of western American literature had already realized the existence of a third stage in the development of a western literature.

      The first stage was the history itself, events culminating, at least in our consciousness, in a period of about fifty years, roughly the second half of the nineteenth century. The second stage was the emergence of a large and varied body of literature. The development of a responsible criticism, a movement of the past twenty-five years or so, is the third stage.

      Broad generalizations need, of course, the obvious qualifications; but a surprising amount of the best of western literature has been written in the twentieth century but set in the nineteenth. Perhaps the historical development of the West went forward at such a heady pace that we are, distanced by time, not as surrogate pioneers but for ourselves, still trying to absorb the glories, cruelties, and stubborn endurance that characterized the westering experience.

      Along with the continuing effort to understand what has happened, however, there is a large and increasing number of talented writers who focus their attention on life in the West as it is today. Appropriately, in undertaking the writing of a literary history that must confront such long running and yet ever-changing concerns, the editors and authors of A Literary History of the American West believe they have contributed to the beginnings of serious study. Far from thinking of this volume as the last word, the members of the Editorial Board have expressed their hope that the present undertaking will encourage further work in the literary history of the West.

      Relevant to encouragement is the Board's decision not to impose a lock-step marching order on contributors in matters of critical approach. Anyone who reads in this volume will note that some of the chapters are strongly interpretive, others more general and neutral. This diversity of ap proach and tone represents the editors' recognition of the variety in western literature, the relative freshness of the West, andthereforeits invita tion to many different types of criticism. Understandably, there are problems and topics yet to be confronted.

      A proper thanks for work done is not possible in an undertaking of this magnitude. Too many have made important contributions. A complete list, certainly, would begin with the names in the Table of Contents, those who did the actual research and writing. The Board of Editors, which changed during the working process, would come next: the late J. Golden Taylor, first elected Editor-in-Chief; Thomas J. Lyon, who took up the unfinished task and saw it through to completion; William T. Pilkington, James Maguire, and George F. Day, who joined the Board at a time when their scholarship and industry were essential; and, the editor who served the longest and deserves a special word of thanks, Gerald Haslam.

      Finally, the support of the members of the Western Literature Association and a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities are gratefully acknowledged, along with thanks to Arthur Huseboe, who worked patiently and efficiently in securing financial support for the project.

      Literary histories, of course, do not have a reason for being unless there exists the literature itself. This volume, perhaps more than others of its kind, is an expression of appreciation for the talented and dedicated literary artists who ignored the odds, avoided temptations to write for popularity or prestige, and chose to write honestly about the American West, believing that experiences long known to be of historical importance are also experiences that need and deserve a literature of importance.