The Inspiration of Landscape in the Works of Vardis Fisher

Summary

Vardis Fisher, an Idaho native, was a mid-Twentieth Century prolific writer of novels on Western Americana, as well as histories, articles and poetry.  Fisher was born and grew up in rural southeastern Idaho, surrounded by mountains and wide open spaces.  Almost all of his writing career was spent near Hagerman, Idaho, on property overlooking a large lake, fed by waterfalls emanating from a basalt cliff face.   He and his wife, Opal, built a house there and fully landscaped the property, in part, to recreate the environment that he knew as a boy, minus what he disliked about it.  The impact of Fisher’s Hagerman property and his boyhood experiences had a profound effect upon his novels and other works.  This relationship between ideas and landscape in Fisher’s works and life will be explored in this paper.   

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reconsidering Archaeologies of Creativity   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 649