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Set in the vast Wyoming Territory, The Virginian depicts the loneliness and challenge of an unknown land where the whistle of a freight train sounds across great miles of silence, where easy camaraderie - and sudden violence - are found around the campfire, and where the rough honesty of 'frontier justice' is just beginning to impose a sense of society on an unruly populace. For Wister, the West represented a territory of adventure that tests the worth of a man. His hero, as John Seelye writes in his Introduction, has his roots in the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper; he is a man who lives by the classic code of chivalry, ruled by quiet courage and deeply felt honor.
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