User:Paine Ellsworth/Book article

The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid

The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid is a biography written by Patrick Floyd "Pat" Garrett. During the summer of 1881 in a small New Mexican village, Garrett shot and killed the notorious outlaw, William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Due to the first publisher's inability to widely distribute this book beginning in 1882, it sold few copies during Garrett's lifetime. By the time the fifth publisher purchased the copyright in 1954, this book had become a major reference for historians who studied and wrote about the Kid's life. The promotion of distribution to libraries in the United States and Europe sent it into a sixth printing in 1965. This biography was long considered to be factual, however historians have since found within it many elaborations and inconsistencies with other accounts of the life of Billy the Kid.

Author's purpose
In the days and weeks that followed the death of Billy the Kid, there were several articles written, mostly in New Mexican newspapers, and even dime novels that depicted the Kid's death in ways that put Pat Garrett in a bad light. As the author wrote in his "introductory" to this biography, "I am incited to this labor, in a measure, by an impulse to correct the thousand false statements which have appeared in the public newspapers and in yellow-covered, cheap novels." This purpose comes in two parts; firstly, Garrett wanted to publicly respond to the speculative allegations that were being printed about the Kid's death, and secondly, he wanted to set the record straight regarding the more notable incidents that had involved the notorious outlaw beginning with his early life and leading up to his untimely death. Many people had begun to talk about the unfairness of Garrett's encounter with the Kid, so Garrett called upon his friend, Marshall Ashmun (Ash) Upson, to ghostwrite this book with him.

Editions
There were five editions of The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid printed. Brief descriptions of these follow: