John Joel Glanton - in Literature

In Literature

• Samuel Chamberlain, who claimed to have been a member of the gang, wrote an account of their activities in his memoir, My Confession.

• A fictionalized Glanton is featured prominently in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian (1985), in which many of the events are based on Chamberlain's account. McCarthy featured a character who was Glanton's second-in-command, the mysterious Judge Holden, as the primary antagonist of his book.

• Glanton, along with another historical scalp hunter, James Kirker, appears briefly in the opening scenes of Larry McMurtry's novel Dead Man's Walk (1995). That book serves as the first part of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy.

• Jeremiah Clemens includes Glanton as a character in his novel Bernard Lile (1856), one of the earliest fictional works concerning the Texas Revolution.

• Glanton is a character in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman and the Redskins (1982), an installment in the long-running Flashman series of comic novels.

• A comic-book account of Glanton's story, also based on Chamberlain's memoir, is included in The Big Book of the Weird Wild West published by Paradox Press.