Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931) was a best-selling biography of Wyatt Earp written by Stuart N. Lake and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. It was the first biography of Earp, written with his contributions. It established the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the public consciousness and conveyed an extraordinary story about Wyatt Earp as a fearless lawman in the American Old West. Earp and his wife Josephine Earp tried to control the account, threatening legal action to persuade Lake to exclude Earp's second wife from the book. When the book was published, neither woman was mentioned.
First American hardcover edition.
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp was involved in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys. While Wyatt is often depicted as the key figure in the shootout, his brother Virgil was both Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal that day and had considerably more experience in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal than did Wyatt. Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. Wyatt was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother.
Wyatt Earp and mother Virginia Ann Cooksey Earp c. 1855
Earp's boyhood home in Pella, Iowa
Looking east from D St. toward 3rd St. in downtown San Bernardino in 1864
Lamar, Missouri, subpoena signed by Constable Wyatt Earp, February 28, 1870