The Virginian (otherwise titled The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains) is a 1902 novel by the American author Owen Wister (1860-1938), set in Wyoming Territory during the 1880s. It describes the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch and is considered the first true fictional western ever written, aside from short stories and pulp dime novels, though modern scholars debate this. The Virginian paved the way for many more westerns by such authors as Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour and several others. The novel was adapted from several short stories published in Harper's Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post between Nov 1893 and May 1902.

The novel begins with an unnamed narrator's arrival in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, from "back East" and his encounter with an impressively tall and handsome stranger. The stranger proves adept at roping horses, as well as facing down a gambler, Trampas, who calls him a "son of a bitch." (At the time, the word was an unacceptable insult in any society, except between joking friends.) The stranger lays a pistol on the table and gently threatens, "When you call me that, smile!" Known only as the Virginian, the stranger turns out to be the narrator's escort to Judge Henry's ranch in Sunk Creek, Wyoming. As the two travel the 263 miles to the ranch, the narrator, who is nicknamed the Tenderfoot, and the Virginian come to know one another as the Tenderfoot slowly begins to understand the nature of life in the West, which is very different from what he expected. This meeting is the beginning of a lifelong friendship and the starting point of the narrator's recounting of key episodes in the life of the Virginian.

In 1885, the Harvard educated Wister sought recuperation at a Wyoming ranch after suffering a nervous breakdown. He’d begin writing various pieces about the West, culminating in this 1902 magnum opus that he dedicated to his friend, President Theodore Roosevelt. It effectively created the Western genre we know today a mysterious, chivalrous cowboy-rides into the West, grapples with moral dilemmas, and encounters a schoolteacher love interest. It also contains classic genre features like horse-thievery, card playing, cattle driving, and a climactic gunfight that s the first showdown in fiction. Truly a landmark work that was the best-selling book in the country for two straight years, garnering Wister fame and fortune and etching a key mythos into the psyche of the nation.