Bears, Wolves & Mounties
Stories of the West and North
Bears, Wolves & Mounties: The Northwestern Genre & Pulp writers.
Created in 1903 by Jack London with the publication of his novel THE CALL OF THE WILD, the Northwestern Genre thrived for the first half of the 20th Century.
In 1907, Robert W Service’s The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses was published. Service would soon be called “The Bard of the Yukon.” Like Jack London, Robert W Service had lived in the Canadian Klondike, basing his popular ballads on his own adventures and local stories: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun. By the men who moil for gold…”
The Northwestern Genre was defined.
A number of great Pulp Writers followed Jack and Robert’s lead…
…quickly gaining an international following with their own thrilling adventures set in the savage Northcountry.
In countless magazines, novels and movies, the Northwestern told the gripping stories of bold adventurers (often scarlet-coated Mounties), fiercely independent women, loyal sled dogs, wild wolves and that almost mythic Northcountry.
Dog stories. Besides London’s heroic Buck and White Fang, James Oliver Curwood gave us Kazan the wolfdog and Marshall Saunders gave us the yarn of Beautiful Joe.
And bears, of course. In my younger wanderings through our own Northern Appalachian forests, I met some black bears. Fave books include James Oliver Curwood’s GRIZZLY KING and Walt Morey’s GENTLE BEN.
And stalwart Mounties:
For more about the North-West Mounted Police in Pulp Fiction Magazines, see Mounties, Wolves & Pulp Writers: North-West Stories and A De Herries Smith
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