The Virginian has been often filmed but who wrote the book?

Owen Wister, who, like several other writers, first studied the law. Born at Philadelphia, July 14, 1860, he became a barrister in 1889 but he abandoned the law to write books. He excelled in stories of the West and is regarded as the writer who laid the foundations of the later form of cowboy stories. The Virginian has been filmed for the cinema screen and a long television series was based on it.