Wolfville Anthology — Alfred Henry Lewis

Wolfville Anthology is the complete, unabrigded collection of Alfred Lewis' five Wolfville novels -- Wolfville, Wolfville Days, Wolfville Nights, Wolfville Folks, and Faro Nell and Her Friends. It is widely believed that Lewis patterned Wolfville after the real town of Tombstone, Arizona. Written in the early 1900s, Lewis most likely was poking fun at the more-traditional Western Cowboy novels of the time.The five novels include a recurring core of hilarious characters, including a divorced gunslinger, a philosophical faro dealer, a doctor, a tyrannical wife who owns and runs a boarding house/restaurant, and the head of the lynching committee, who is only too happy to string anyone and everyone up. While sitting on the porch smoking and drinking, the Old Gentleman narrates, in assumed-Cowboy-dialect, often-jangling interactions between the permanent and episodes temporary Wolfville residents.Lewis is acknowledged to have written the funniest set of Western Cowboy stories ever, A number of his stories, including those featuring Faro Nell and Texas Thompson, were turned into films around 1920.