Picture a Kansas cattletown. What do you see? Most people see a "Gunsmoke" version of Dodge City--a dusty frontier town full of thirsty cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and ladies of the evening. 
But the "Gunsmoke" version tells only half the story, according to historian C. Robert Haywood. Two cultures existed simultaneously in Kansas cattle towns, Haywood writes. Alongside the Wild West culture of the cattle trailing industry there existed a highly developed Victorian society, complete with civic activists, churches, boosterism, small-town politics, and Victorian architecture to rival that of the east coast. 
In Victorian West Haywood examines education, recreation, social stratification, philanthropy and common community goals in three Kansas cowtowns--Dodge City, Wichita, and Caldwell. He finds that the Victorian attitudes of the post-Civil War era prevailed in Kansas as well as the rest of the nation. 
Since the Wild West aspect of cattletown life has been so heavily stressed in both academic and popular arenas, the development of Kansas towns as progressive, even elegant Victorian cities, has been overlooked. But, according to Haywood, life in Kansas cattletowns was clearly tied to dominant Victorian themes: society was stratified, Victorian fads were emulated, "fancies" were coveted, and Victorian manners and morals were part of the process of refinement. 
In Victorian West Haywood relates Victorian themes like optimism, anxiety, anti-intellectualism, and the commercial spirit to the Kansas community experience. He also provides a synthesis of cultural information that places the cowtowns of Kansas in a broader cultural context.

Victorian West

History

Haywood, C. Robert

Haywood, Clarence Robert

Americas

University Press of Kansas

Picture a Kansas cattletown. What do you see? Most people see a "Gunsmoke" version of Dodge City—a dusty frontier town full of thirsty cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and ladies of the evening. But the "Gunsmoke" version tells only half the story, according to historian C. Robert Haywood. Two cultures existed simultaneously in Kansas cattle towns, Haywood writes. Alongside the Wild West culture of the cattle trailing industry there existed a highly developed Victorian society, complete with civic activists, churches, boosterism, small-town politics, and Victorian architecture to rival that of the east coast. In Victorian West Haywood examines education, recreation, social stratification, philanthropy and common community goals in three Kansas cowtowns—Dodge City, Wichita, and Caldwell. He finds that the Victorian attitudes of the post-Civil War era prevailed in Kansas as well as the rest of the nation. Since the Wild West aspect of cattletown life has been so heavily stressed in both academic and popular arenas, the development of Kansas towns as progressive, even elegant Victorian cities, has been overlooked. But, according to Haywood, life in Kansas cattletowns was clearly tied to dominant Victorian themes: society was stratified, Victorian fads were emulated, "fancies" were coveted, and Victorian manners and morals were part of the process of refinement. In Victorian West Haywood relates Victorian themes like optimism, anxiety, anti-intellectualism, and the commercial spirit to the Kansas community experience. He also provides a synthesis of cultural information that places the cowtowns of Kansas in a broader cultural context.

Victorian West: Class and Culture in Kansas Cattle Towns

By reputation, Kansas isn't the funniest place on earth. But it has its share of humor. It can boast of politicians who taunted puritan farmers with "raise less corn and more hell," a gubernatorial candidate whose claim to fame was perfecting and marketing a goat-gland transplant for men desperate to restore their sexual vigor, and a legendary attorney general who covertly flew the friendly skies of Kansas in hot pursuit of illegal liquor consumption on passenger planes. In Tough Daisies, Robert Haywood reveals the lighter side of a state that's too often pegged a collection of sober-minded moralists struggling to find Utopia among the stars. He explores what has passed for humor in good times and bad and divulges what makes Kansans laugh. Both the subject of laughter (the inspiration) and the humorist (the inspired) are featured in this serious study (most of the time) of a funny subject. An annotated sampler of jokes, stories, cartoons, and poems, this book illustrates what Kansans have chuckled and chortled at from settlement days to the present. Especially rich veins of humor are found in the frontier experience, the Great Depression, Populism, and politics. Investigating an array of rib-tickling facets of Kansas life, Haywood also illuminates the wit, sarcasm, and satire generated by grasshoppers, flat land, farmers and their daughters, war, bootleggers, school teachers, preachers, droughts, tornadoes—and Toto too.

Tough Daisies: Kansas Humor from "The Lane County Bachelor" to Bob Dole

Literature & Fiction

Cowtown Lawyers: Dodge City and Its Attorneys, 1876-1886

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Haywood (history emeritus, Washburn U., Topeka, Kansas) chronicles the parallels in the bronco-like rides of the trail-driving industry fortunes and 1890s depression misfortunes of one of Dodge City's leading citizens and 19th-century America's foremost cattle town. Includes a map of Wright's "princely domain" and several early photos. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

The Merchant Prince of Dodge City: The Life and Times of Robert M. Wright

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

The Preacher's Kid

Woodley Pr

Trails South: The Wagon-Road Economy in the Dodge City-Panhandle Regionby C. Robert Haywood

Trails South: The Wagon-Road Economy in the Dodge City-Panhandle Region

Prairie Books

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Books by Haywood, C. Robert