Random thought

I had been thinking the modern western had, as a kind of crossroads, the fiction of Andy Adams and Zane Grey at the start of the 20th century. One representing the notion of realism and the other a more romanticized notion of the west. The latter won out. But this goes back even further, at least to the fiction of Caroline M Kirkland and James Fenimore Cooper, both of whom represented the same ideas and again the more romanticized notion won out. Be curious to see if it goes back even further. Imagine a world where Andy Adams became hugely successful and Zane Grey did not.