Victoria Lamont - Westerns: A Womens History

In 1991, as a new MA student at the University of Guelph, I signed up for a graduate seminar on Women and the West with Christine Bold. I owe my subsequent career to that seminar. It was Christine who introduced me to the study of popular culture and to some of the women writers, including B. M. Bower and Frances McElrath, who figure prominently in this book. Christine also provided invaluable feedback on early drafts of this book. I am also indebted to the mentorship of Mary Chapman, who supervised my dissertation; Melody Graulich, who edited my early publications and went out of her way to welcome me into the scholarly community at the Western Literature Association, and Dianne Newell, who has been a generous mentor, collaborator, and friend. Virginia Shay, Sarah York, Natalie Blagden, Stephanie Jorgensen, and Ashna Zaidi provided first-rate research assistance to this project. I also thank Kristin Elias Rowley and the staff at the University of Nebraska Press, who have been nothing but patient and helpful throughout the process of preparing this book. I have also been fortunate to have been a part of the thriving scholarly communities at the Western Literature Association, where many of the ideas in this book were first tested, and at the University of Waterloo English Department, where I am continually inspired and energized by our dedicated staff, students, and faculty. I thank my partner, John Straube, for his patience and understanding and for looking after the dogs.

This book involved archival research at the Houghton Library, Harvard; the Library of Congress; and the Syracuse University Library. I am thankful to the staff at all of these libraries for their assistance. The interlibrary loan department at the University of Waterloo has been tremendously helpful in tracking down many obscure documents needed for my research. This project would also not be possible without digital archives, including the Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection, the Pulp Magazines Project, and Galactic Central. I thank the many individuals who contribute to the time-consuming process of cultural preservation by digitizing and organizing important ephemeral documents. Reed Doke and Bill Bower, grandsons of B. M. Bower, contributed invaluably to this project by sharing their memories and family stories with me. I am especially grateful to Reed for allowing me to park in his sunroom for days on end while I poured over his grandmothers extensive archives and for making excellent turkey sandwiches.

Research for this book was generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, with additional support provided through the Bob Harding and Lois Claxton Humanities and Social Sciences Endowment Fund at the University of Waterloo.