According to John William Rogers, Charles Wilkins Webber was "the first fiction writer of importance to use Texas as his theme." His fiction was based largely on his own experiences, as was the early work of his contemporary Herman Melville; in fact, an anonymous reviewer in the U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review (May 1848) compared Webber's novel Old Hicks, the Guide; or, Adventures in the Camanche Country in Search of a Gold Mine(1848) favorably to Melville's Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas(1847). Acknowledging that Old Hicks"is not finished with the care and polish of Omoo," the reviewer said that "there is in it far more earnestness and poetry . . . while it has the same remarkable vraisemblance of that popular work." Webber's novel is, according to the reviewer, even superior to Melville's "in the confidence it inspires of its truth."

Webber was born on 29 May 1819 in...