Owen Wister, prolific American writer and author of The Virginian, was born a wealthy physician's son in Germantown. He attended Harvard, studied music in Paris, but returned to Philadelphia to work in a law office. Travelling to the West for his health, he began a career of writing western stories that contributed strongly to the American myth of the cowboy. He lived his later life in Philadelphia and died there in July 1938. (By John Osborne)