Would You Like Some Milk with That Serial?

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, magazines were a large and thriving industry. But the word “magazine” referred to something quite different than the shiny, advertisement-filled publications found on racks today. Around the turn of the century, popular monthly magazines such as Everybody’s, McClure’s, and Munsey’s ran from around 100 to 150 pages, sometimes including thirty or more stories, articles, and poems, and cost ten or fifteen cents per issue. Though fiction has largely disappeared from today’s magazines, in those days it was a staple—besides publications that combined fiction and nonfiction, there were many all-fiction magazines, some devoted to specific genres—love stories, adventure stories, Westerns, mysteries, and more.

Oh My Darling, Oh My Darling, Oh My Darling . . . Kodak Camera?

“I love the wild, where I can ride and ride, and never meet a human being—where I can dream and dally and feast my eyes on a landscape man has not touched. I have lived most of my life in New York, and I love nature so well that I'm inclined to be jealous of her.”

In B.M. Bower's Her Prairie Knight, New York socialite Beatrice "Trix" Lansell visits Montana for the first time and falls in love with the landscape. (And with a handsome cowpunch named Keith Cameron, but that comes later!) Trix is determined to experience all that mother nature and Montana have to offer, and to capture it all on film. She never leaves the ranch without her beloved "Kodak," and often holds up the riding party, much to the amusement of her British suitor, Sir Redmond.

Vintage Happy Hour with Jenny Q: Careful . . . It Bites!

I've been in a Western mood ever since falling in love with Her Prairie Knight by B.M. Bower, so I thought today's Vintage Happy Hour would be the perfect time to brush up on my Western drinking history!

Of course, in the Old West most everybody was drinking whiskey. It was cheap and there was plenty of it. But it didn't always taste good. Saloon owners cut it with anything from turpentine to gunpowder to stretch a bottle further and make another buck. By the early 20th century, cocktails were making their way west, and it should be no surprise that the first Western cocktails were whiskey based. One of the most famous is the Rattlesnake.

Worth a Thousand Words: American Progress

This is American Progress by John Gast. Painted in 1872 for a publisher of popular western travel guides, the piece is an allegorical representation of "Manifest Destiny," and if ever a painting was worth a thousand words, this one is it! Here, an angelic Columbia leads American settlers from the enlightened East into the dark, uncivilized West, as bison and Indians flee before them and telegraph wire and trains follow behind them. Click on the pic to get a closer look at all of the detail in this painting. It depicts not only the progression of Manifest Destiny, but also the progression of the settlers themselves.

Home, Home on the Range, Where the Deer and the Antelope and the British-Owned Cattle Play...

The American West of the 19th and early 20th centuries was a place filled with colorful characters and fascinating stories. The new opportunities of the West attracted people of all classes and nationalities, in search of fortune, adventure, or escape. Even as seemingly unlikely a figure as an English aristocrat, such as Sir Redmond Hayes in Her Prairie Knight, was by no means a rarity on the plains of Montana.

In the 1870s and 1880s, when the cattle boom was in full swing, many wealthy Englishmen saw the ranching business as an excellent opportunity for investment, and American ranchers welcomed the capital the English could provide. “[English] drawing rooms buzzed with the stories of this last of bonanzas,” wrote John Clay, a Scotsman who eventually became a highly successful ranch manager himself; “staid old gentlemen, who scarcely knew the difference between a steer and a heifer, discussed it over their port and nuts.”

Enhanced eBook: Her Prairie Knight by B.M. Bower

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When Eastern society girl Beatrice “Trix” Lansell arrives in Montana for a visit with her brother, she is swept off her feet by the majestic, rugged beauty of the land, by the simplicity and satisfaction of ranch life, and by a handsome cowboy named Keith Cameron. But Keith seems to be immune to Trix’s charms, and as a woman used to having young men eating out of the palm of her hand, Trix is a bit put out.