Owen Lister, as much as anyone, founded the conventions of the "Western", although Zane Grey - who came later - did much more to popularise it. It was Lister who largely began the cult of the cattle-lands as God's Own Country, a healthy escape from the overpopulated, artificial East with its social constraints. Molly Wood, the heroine, is a New England schoolmarm who goes out West to Wyoming where she meets The Virginian himself; and in the final chapter, when about to marry her, he is forced instead to fight it out at gun-point with the evil Trampas. The scenario, needless to say, was borrowed for many later books and films including High Noon. Though Wister's storytelling is conventional and so is his psychology, his dialogue is always vivid and authentic-sounding, and he knew at first hand the raw frontier world he depicts.