Frederick Manfred has had two careers as a writer: the first as a writer primarily identified with the Midwest, but in the autobiographical tradition of Thomas Wolfe; the second as a writer identified with the American West, particularly the West of the nineteenth century. In the second career he has achieved his greatest reputation. The two careers are not totally distinct entities, of course; but their reality is emphasized not only by the fact that Manfred is among the minority of writers who have published under two names, but also because he changed his legal name after his career was well launched. A writer would take such a step only after careful deliberation, for the common reader would assume that there were two writers, not one. Old names die slowly: James D. Hart's Oxford Companion to American Literature, 4th edition (1965), gives the main entry to Manfred under his...