Louis L'Amour 1908?–
(Born Louis Dearborn LaMoore; also writes under the pseudonyms of Tex Burns and Jim Mayo) American novelist.
L'Amour is a prolific and popular writer who has written over eighty frontier novels that have sold in excess of one-hundred million copies. His style of storytelling is suggestive of a campfire raconteur with an endless string of tales about life in the Old West. All of L'Amour's frontier fiction reinforces a traditional value system—a respect for the land, a protective attitude towards women, a dedication to the family unit, and a life and death with honor—which, along with L'Amour's entertaining style, makes his novels appealing to a large audience. Many of L'Amour's works have been turned into cinema and television movies, including Hondo and How the West Was Won.
L'Amour's works may be divided into two subjects. His earliest stories, and many others throughout his career, portray the wandering, tough frontier hero who is embroiled in many fights for justice, and finally becomes domesticated. Hondo is considered the best story of this type. L'Amour's second and most ambitious project is his continuing saga of three families (the Sacketts, the Chantrys, and the Talons), which parallels the historical settlement of the frontier.
(See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 3; and Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1980.)
Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism, ©1983 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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