Introduction: liberalism and the language of wilderness -- Theoria and liberal governmentality: travel in Bret Harte's Overland monthly -- Narrative and liberal selfhood: Noah Brooks and the aesthetics of history -- "With which it was my fortune to be affiliated": social contingency in the life and poetry of Ina Coolbrith -- The limits of liberalism: Chinese, Indians, and the politics of cosmopolitanism in the West -- The greening of nineteenth-century liberalism: John Muir's wilderness and the discourse of civilization -- The brute's luck: liberal egalitarianism and the politics of literary naturalism -- Conclusion: the Overland group, luck, and the writing of the West.