Books with title Riders of the Purple Sage

Arguably Zane Grey’s most popular novel and a forerunner of the western genre, Riders of the Purple Sage tells the story of a Mormon woman caught between the persecution of religious zealots and several “Gentile” gunmen seeking to lend her a helping hand. Set in Utah during the nineteenth century, this novel offers an early critique on the practice of polygamy and plural marriage in the Old West.

• The book includes 10 unique illustrations that are relevant to its content.Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger in black, who shows up in a remote Utah town just in time to save the young and beautiful rancher Jane Withersteen from having to marry a Mormon elder against her will.

This splendid, powerful, classic novel was written in 1911, but for over ninety years it has existed only in a profoundly censored version, one that undermined the truth of the characters and the integrity of Zane Grey's masterpiece. In this restored edition, with text based on Grey's original handwritten manuscript, the real Riders of the Purple Sage can finally be read as the author wrote it.

This edition includes:The complete novel (Riders of the Purple Sage),Complete bibliography of Zane Grey,Over ten western illustrations,Biography of Zane Grey,A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage. Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile. She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the little village of Cottonwoods was to involve her. And then she sighed, remembering that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah and that he had left it to her. She owned all the ground and many of the cottages. Withersteen House was hers, and the great ranch, with its thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of the sage. To her belonged Amber Spring, the water which gave verdure and beauty to the village and made living possible on that wild purple upland waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever befell Cottonwoods. That year, 1871, had marked a change which had been gradually coming in the lives of the peace-loving Mormons of the border. Glaze—Stone Bridge—Sterling, villages to the north, had risen against the invasion of Gentile settlers and the forays of rustlers. There had been opposition to the one and fighting with the other. And now Cottonwoods had begun to wake and bestir itself and grown hard.

Originally published in 1912, Riders of the Purple Sage, is Zane Grey’s best-known novel. This classic tale is full of action, violence, sentimentalism, romance, and adventure. As in many Westerns, the description of the landscape plays a major role, being sometimes dangerous and menacing, and at others times providing safety for those who encounter it. This story of a gun-slinging avenger who saves a beautiful young woman from marrying against her will played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre begun by Owen Wister in The Virginian (1904).

Pearl Zane Grey was a practicing dentist and part-time writer in Ohio until a trip out west with Colonel Buffalo Jones changed the course of his writing and his life forever. With 54 western novels to his credit, Zane Grey is possibly America's most popular author. his first-hand experiences give his novels a ring of truth and give his readers a genuine taste of the spirit of the Old West.

Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American dentist and author best 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. In addition to the commercial success of his printed works, they had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions. His novels and short stories have been adapted into 112 films, two television episodes, and a television series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater.