B. M. Bower

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy (November 15, 1871 – July 23, 1940), best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West.[1] Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying U Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting."[2]

Biography

Born Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, MN and living her early years in Big Sandy, Montana, she was married three times: to Clayton Bower, in 1890; to Bertrand William Sinclair,(also a Western author) in 1912; and to Robert Elsworth Cowan, in 1921.[1][3][4] Bower's 1912 novel Lonesome Land was praised in The Bookman magazine for its characterization. [4] She wrote 57 Western novels, several of which were turned into films.[5]

Works

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Tribune Staff. "125 Montana Newsmakers: B. M. Bower". Great Falls Tribune. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  2. ↑ William A. Bloodworth Jr., 1981, "Mulford and Bower: Myth and History in the Early Western," Great Plains Quarterly 1(2): 95-104.http://scholar.google.co.kr/scholar?hl=en&q=clarence+mulford&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp= abstract; accessed 2013.11.21.
  3. ↑ American women: the official who's who, 1935.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 William Bloodworth, "Bower, B(ertha nee) M(uzzy), in Twentieth Century Western Writers, edited by Geoff Sadler. Chicago and London, St. James Press, 1991, ISBN 0-912289-98-8 (pp.73-5)
  5. ↑ Current biography: who's news and why, 1940

External links