20th-century American novelists
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels, though he called his work "frontier stories". His most widely known Western fiction works include Last of the Breed, Hondo, Shalako, and the Sackett series.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He has been praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature".
Owen Wister
Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer. His novel The Virginian, published in 1902, helped create the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and built Wister's reputation as the "father of Western fiction.
Zane Grey
Zane Grey (born Pearl Zane Grey; January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book.