Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1997
Abstract
Bernard DeVoto spent the years of the Second World War hard at work on two books. Although very different from one another, both books happened to have Western settings, far from the home DeVoto had been making for himself and his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of these books seemed to pour itself from him, mounting to 100,000 words, then swelling to 150,000, and rounding out at about 170,000. Its subject was the mountain fur trade, the larger-than-life stories of Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, Joe Meek, Chief Joseph, Black Hawk, and many other trappers and natives. Making the book even more colorful was a graphic inset, the reproduction of a major historical recovery: this was a collection of paintings that had been done by Alfred Jacob Miller, one of the first artists to have made a record of the frontier. DeVoto gave his book the familiar title Across the Wide Missouri, which for a time may have blurred its formidability. However, his work was quickly recognized as a critical success, which included winning a Pulitzer in history and taking another award in the field, a Bancroft Prize.
Recommended Citation
Burrows, Russell. Bernard DeVoto. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1997. Digital. Western Writers Series, 127.