Артур Чепмен: Американский поэт и автор ковбойской поэзии

American poet (1873–1935)

Arthur Chapman (June 25, 1873 – December 4, 1935) was an early twentieth century American poet, newspaper columnist and author. He wrote a subgenre of American poetry known as cowboy poetry. His most famous poem was Out Where the West Begins.

Arthur Chapman was born in Rockford, Illinois on June 25, 1873. He worked at a newspaper there before moving to Chicago.

In 1919 Chapman moved to New York City, where he lived on the East Side of Manhattan. He took a job as a staff writer for the New York Tribune, which he held until his retirement in 1925. Chapman's first novel, Mystery Ranch (1921), combined western adventure with murder mystery. The Literary Review dismissed it as "melodramatic" and provided "little for the seeker of literary values". However, The New York Times credited Chapman, "known heretofore as a poet of the West," with being "a clever technician in a new field". Mystery Ranch achieved a modest commercial success. After his wife died in 1923, Chapman married Kathleen Caesar, an editor at the Bell Syndicate; they had no children. He wrote fiction and nonfiction throughout his career as a journalist and continued after he retired. Chapman's second novel, John Crews (1926), another adventure romance of frontier life, sold better. Described by the New York Herald Tribune as "a lively and continuously readable yarn," John Crews was successful enough to have a reprint edition by another publisher in its first year (March 28, 1926). In 1924, Chapman published The Story of Colorado, Out Where the West Begins, a nonfiction illustrated history of the State of Colorado. His final book was The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business (1932), a history of the Pony Express. Both books were commercial and critical successes. Arthur Chapman died in New York City on December 4, 1935. In 2010, both of Chapman's poetry books were republished in new editions.