Illustrated magazines were at the height of their popularity in the years between the appearance of Remington's first signed drawings in Harper's Weekly in 1886 and his death in 1909. Remington produced some twenty-seven hundred illustrations for popular periodicals and books by prominent authors like Theodore Roosevelt and Francis Parkman.

Largely remembered for his sculpture and painting, Remington was in his own day an equally prominent author, producing over one hundred articles and stories, six compilations of stories, and two novels. His writing enhanced his reputation as an authority on life in the West. Even in his most fictional accounts, there is an intentional blurring between the narrator and Remington himself, cultivating the perception that he based both his stories and his artwork on firsthand experience.