The Life And Legends Of Calamity Jane

Download or read book The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane written by Richard W. Etulain and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows the name Calamity Jane. Scores of dime novels and movie and TV Westerns have portrayed this original Wild West woman as an adventuresome, gun-toting hellion. Although Calamity Jane has probably been written about more than any other woman of the nineteenth-century American West, fiction and legend have largely obscured the facts of her life. This lively, concise, and exhaustively researched biography traces the real person from the Missouri farm where she was born in 1856 through the development of her notorious persona as a Wild West heroine. Before Calamity Jane became a legend, she was Martha Canary, orphaned when she was only eleven years old. From a young age she traveled fearlessly, worked with men, smoked, chewed tobacco, and drank. By the time she arrived in the boomtown of Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876, she had become Calamity Jane, and the real Martha Canary had disappeared under a landslide of purple prose. Calamity became a hostess and dancer in Deadwood’s saloons and theaters. She imbibed heavily, and she might have been a prostitute, but she had other qualities, as well, including those of an angel of mercy who ministered to the sick and the down-and-out. Journalists and dime novelists couldn’t get enough of either version, nor, in the following century, could filmmakers. Sorting through the stories, veteran western historian Richard W. Etulain’s account begins with a biography that offers new information on Calamity’s several “husbands” (including one she legally married), her two children, and a woman who claimed to be the daughter of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity, a story Etulain discredits. In the second half of the book, Etulain traces the stories that have shaped Calamity Jane’s reputation. Some Calamity portraits, he says, suggest that she aspired to a quiet life with a husband and family. As the 2004–2006 HBO series Deadwood makes clear, well more than a century after her first appearance as a heroine in the Deadwood Dick dime novels, Calamity Jane lives on—raunchy, unabashed, contradictory, and ambiguous as ever.

Download or read book Wild Bill Hickok & Calamity Jane written by James D. McLaird and published by SDSHS Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: bibliography, index, eight-page photo essay

Download or read book Calamity Jane written by James D. McLaird and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A meticulously researched account about how an alcoholic prostitute was transformed into a Wild West heroine is presented in this biography of Martha Canary, the woman known as Calamity Jane.

Download or read book Searching for Calamity written by Linda Jucovy and published by Linda Jucovy. This book was released on 2012 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Who in the world would think that Calamity Jane would get to be such a famous person?” one of the pallbearers at her funeral asked an interviewer many years later. It seemed like a reasonable question. Who else has accomplished so little by conventional standards and yet achieved such enduring fame? But conventional standards do not apply. Calamity was poor, uneducated, and an alcoholic. For decades, she wandered through the small towns and empty spaces of the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. But she also had a natural talent for self-invention. She created a story about herself and promoted it tirelessly for much of her life. The story emphasized her love of adventure and the heroic role she played in key events in the early history of the American west. She became that story to people around the country who read about her. And she became that story to herself. The details about her exploits were rarely accurate, but a larger truth lay beneath them. In an era when there were few options for women, Calamity had the audacity to be herself. She lived as she pleased, which is to say that she allowed herself the same freedoms her male contemporaries assumed as their birthright. She spoke her mind. She flouted the rules. She dressed as a man when it was illegal for women to wear pants; hung out in saloons although that was unheard of for any woman who was not a prostitute; did men’s work; cursed, hollered, and smoked cigars. Although Calamity’s name is imprinted in history, most people know little about her. This highly readable biography brings Calamity to life against the backdrop of the American west and of women’s determination to break free from their historical constraints.

Download or read book Calamity Jane written by Doris Faber and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1997-08-25 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was Calamity Jane? Simply a legend created by a popular novelist? Or did Calamity Jane, born Martha Jane Cannary, really live the life she claimed? Doris Faber sorts out fact from fiction to tell the true story of a remarkable American woman who was part of the legend that celebrated the freedom and adventure of the West.

Download or read book Calamity Jane written by Sara Gilbert and published by The Creative Company. This book was released on 2005-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the life and legends related to the frontierswoman known as Calamity Jane.

Download or read book Calamity Jane: Frontierswoman written by Alicia Z. Klepeis and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wild West was home to many men and women looking for adventure and a new life. Back then, in a place of danger and intrigue, there were several characters that made their mark on the frontier. One woman was Calamity Jane. Born Martha Jane Cannary, Calamity Jane would become one of America’s best-known sharpshooters and horse riders. Her life is told in here in easy-to-read language and vivid illustrations sure to engage young readers.