The genre

I'm reading the book Gender and Genre: An Introduction to Women Writers of Formula Westerns, 1900-1950, by Norris Wilson Yates. I'm just getting into it so its covering westerns in general without focusing on women writers, which is helping me to understand the western novel genre. I don't know what a formula western is, maybe because I prefer story to critical analysis when reading. Does anyone else have recommendations for works that discuss the Westerns genre in general? I would like to read more.

The Wister Trace by Loren D. Estleman.

I don't have any suggestions, but you might check out the blog 'Western Fiction Review'. Steve that runs that site seems pretty knowledgeable. He might have a suggestion. He's an LT member as well, but I'm not sure how often he checks in here.

He does have interviews with western authors as well from time to time. Reading through some of those might be enlightening.

A few others:

Will Wright, Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (1977)

Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (1993)

Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Film and Fiction (1998)

Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (1998)(the third volume of Slotkin's three-volume study).

Thank you for the suggestions. As I'm reading Genre and Gender, the endnotes also have a lot of source information. I'm new at researching (though not new at reading) westerns and had no idea there was so much research done. I am feeling greeding to read all of it.