Owen Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in Germantown, a neighborhood within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is widely regarded as the "father" of western fiction.

His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician, one of a long line of Wisters raised at the storied Belfield estate in Germantown. His mother, Sarah Butler Wister, was the daughter of actress Fanny Kemble.

Education: He briefly attended schools in Switzerland and Britain, and later studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt, an editor of the Harvard Lampoon, and a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter). Wister graduated from Harvard in 1882.

At first, he aspired to a career in music and spent two years studying in Europe. However, he turned to writing and became famous for his western novels, most notably The Virginian.