SOURCE: "The Unpublished Manuscripts of Andy Adams," Colorado Magazine, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, April, 1951, pp. 97-107.

[In the essay below, Davidson evaluates Adams's unpublished novels, plays, and short stories.]

At his death in 1935, at the age of seventy-six, Andy Adams left a considerable number of manuscripts which, a few years later, were given to the State Historical Society of Colorado by his nephew Andrew T. Adams, of Denver. An examination of these unpublished writings of the author of the acknowledged masterpiece of the literature of the cattle industry, The Log of a Cowboy, reveals much concerning his range of interests, his literary ambitions, and his strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

The published works of Andy Adams include seven books, all issued by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, and a few stories and articles scattered through newspapers and magazines. The Log of a Cowboy (1903), Andy's first appearance in print...