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Frederick William Nolan (7 March 1931 – 15 June 2022) was an English editor and writer, mostly known as Frederick Nolan; he also used the pen names Donald Severn, Daniel Rockfern, Christine McGuire, and Frederick H. Christian.
Nolan was born on 7 March 1931 in Liverpool, [1] where he was educated, as well as in Aberaeron in Wales.[ citation needed ]
At age 21, Nolan began the research that established him as one of England's leading authorities on the American West. In 1954, he co-founded The English Westerners' Society.[ citation needed ] [2]
At the start of his career, he became first a reader, and later an editor, for Corgi (Bantam) Books in London. Moving to London in the early 1960s made it possible for him to pursue the other consuming interest of his life: American musical theatre. During this time, he also began writing Western fiction as Frederick H. Christian, a pseudonym derived from his own, his wife Heidi's, and his oldest son's first names.[ citation needed ]
Over the next decade, while working in publishing – with Transworld, then Penguin, Collins, and Granada in London, and later with Ballantine and Warner in New York - he produced 14 Westerns as well as a considerable body of journalism.
On 4 July 1973, Nolan quit his job as a highly paid publishing executive and signed a contract to write eight full-length novels in a year. The first of these was The Oshawa Project (published in the U.S. as The Algonquin Project), which MGM later filmed as Brass Target . Since that time Nolan has completed more than 70 books, a similar number of biographical studies, and articles for historical journals.
One of the foremost authorities on the life and times of Billy the Kid, [3] and the history of the American West in general, Nolan appeared frequently in television documentaries dealing with the subject, as well as lecturing to historical societies in the U.K. and U.s., and on cruise ships.
His Westerns include the Angel series of books as well as five additional books in the Sudden series created by Oliver Strange. These have latterly been reissued under new titles, while the Angel series now appears under the pseudonym Daniel Rockfern (which is an anagram of "Frederick Nolan").[ citation needed ]
In 1993, Nolan received the Border Regional Library Association of Texas Award for Literary Excellence. In 2001, he was awarded the first France V. Scholes Prize for outstanding research from the Historical Society of New Mexico. The same year, he received the first J. Evetts Haley Fellowship from the Haley Memorial Library in Midland, Texas. In 2005, the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association (WOLA) gave him its highest honour, the Glenn Shirley Award, for his lifetime contribution to outlaw-lawman history. In 2006, The Westerners Foundation named his The West of Billy the Kid one of the 100 most important 20th-century historical works on the American West. In 2007, the National Outlaw-Lawman Association (NOLA) awarded him its William D. Reynolds Award in Recognition of Outstanding Research and Writing in Western History. A year later, True West Magazine named him "Best Living Non-fiction Writer".[ citation needed ]
Garrett Dossier:
As Christine McGuire
As Frederick H. Christian
As Daniel Rockfern
| Nonfiction works
Translated from French
(and 15 other titles in the series) |
David Samuel Peckinpah was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic The Wild Bunch received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute's top 100 list. His films employed a visually innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence as well as a revisionist approach to the Western genre.
Billy the Kid, also known by the pseudonym William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West, who is alleged to have killed 21 men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21. He also fought in New Mexico's Lincoln County War, during which he allegedly committed three murders.
The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of William H. Bonney. Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessmen Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.
Gunfighters, also called gunslingers, or in the 19th and early 20th centuries gunmen, were individuals in the American Old West who gained a reputation of being dangerous with a gun and participated in gunfights and shootouts. Today, the term "gunslinger" is more or less used to denote someone who is quick on the draw with a pistol, but can also refer to riflemen and shotgun messengers. The gunfighter is also one of the most popular characters in the Western genre and has appeared in associated films, video games, and literature.
Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett was an American Old West lawman, bartender and customs agent known for killing Billy the Kid. He was the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, as well as Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
The revisionist Western is a sub-genre of the Western film. Designated a post-classical variation of the traditional Western, the revisionist subverts the myth and romance of the traditional by means of character development and realism to present a less simplistic view of life in the "Old West". While the traditional Western always embodies a clear boundary between good and evil, the revisionist Western does not.
The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director. The film is notable as Russell's breakthrough role, and she became regarded as a sex symbol and a Hollywood icon. Later advertising billed Russell as the sole star. The Outlaw and The Ox-Bow Incident are the earliest films in the AllMovie list of psychological Westerns.
Brushy Bill Roberts also known as William Henry Roberts, Ollie Partridge William Roberts, Ollie N. Roberts, or Ollie L. Roberts, was an American man who attracted attention in the late 1940s and the 1950s by claiming to be Western outlaw William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid. Roberts' claim was rejected by the governor of New Mexico, Thomas J. Mabry, in 1950. Brushy Bill's story is promoted by the "Billy the Kid Museum" in his hometown of Hico in Hamilton County, Texas. His claim was explored in a 2011 episode of Brad Meltzer's Decoded and a segment by Robert Stack in 1989 on Unsolved Mysteries.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 American Revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah, written by Rudy Wurlitzer, and starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, Barry Sullivan, Jason Robards, Slim Pickens and Bob Dylan. The film is about an aging Pat Garrett (Coburn), hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid (Kristofferson).
John Simpson Chisum was a wealthy cattle baron in the American West in the mid-to-late 19th century. He was born in Hardeman County, Tennessee, and moved with his family to the Republic of Texas in 1837, later finding work as a building contractor. He also served as county clerk in Lamar County. He was of Scottish, English, and Welsh descent.
David Rudabaugh was a cowboy, outlaw, and gunfighter in the American Old West. Modern writers often refer to him as "Dirty Dave" because of his alleged aversion to water, though no evidence has emerged to show that he was ever referred to as such in his own lifetime.
Billy the Kid is a 1930 American pre-Code Western film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid and lawman Pat Garrett. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
Jesse Wayne Brazel, or Wayne Brazel, was an American Old West ranch hand, during the closing years of that era. Brazel's place in history resulted from his 1908 confession and trial for the fatal shooting of former lawman Pat Garrett who, more than a quarter of a century earlier in 1881, had tracked down and killed William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid.
Brass Target is a 1978 American suspense war film based on the 1974 novel The Algonquin Project by Frederick Nolan. The film was produced by Berle Adams and Arthur Lewis and directed by John Hough. It stars Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Patrick McGoohan and Max von Sydow.
Jesse Evans was an American outlaw and gunman of the Old West, and leader of the Jesse Evans Gang. He received some attention due to his disappearance in 1882, after which he was never seen or heard from again, and is now presumably deceased.
Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, also known as Billy the Kid, is a 1989 American western television film about famed gunman Billy the Kid. It aired on TNT cable channel on May 10, 1989.
The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, The Noted Desperado of the Southwest is a biography and partly first-hand account written by Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, in collaboration with a ghostwriter, Marshall Ashmun "Ash" Upson. During the summer of 1881 in a small New Mexican village, Garrett shot and killed the notorious outlaw, William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Due to the first publisher's inability to widely distribute this book beginning in 1882, it sold relatively few copies during Garrett's lifetime. By the time the fifth publisher purchased the copyright in 1954, this book had become a major reference for historians who have studied the Kid's brief life. The promotion and distribution of the fifth version of this book to libraries in the United States and Europe sent it into a sixth printing in 1965, and by 1976 it had reached its tenth printing. For a generation after Sheriff Garrett shot the Kid, his account was considered to be factual, but historians have since found in this book many embellishments and inconsistencies with other accounts of the life of Billy the Kid.
Mark J. Dworkin was a Canadian writer of American Western history and an author, notable for his publication, American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta. Dworkin was a noted historian, researcher and editor, and considered an expert on Central and South American ancient cultures. In 1990, he wrote Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas: Mysteries of ancient civilizations of Central and South America, a popular textbook, still in use in many schools.
The legend of Billy the Kid has acquired iconic status in American folklore, yet the outlaw himself, also known as William Bonney, had minimal impact on historical events in New Mexico Territory of the late 1800s. More has been written about Billy the Kid than any other gunslinger in the history of the American West, while hundreds of books, motion pictures, radio and television programs and even a ballet have been inspired by his legend.
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