Since you're asking about perceptions, it's probably fair to bring up that Irish novelist's story about the Eastern European phantasm, Dracula, which enjoyed a great deal of popularity. It was published in 1897.

One of the main characters, Quincey Morris (who's usually left out of Hollywood treatments), is a cowboy wandering around London in a fringed leather jacket with a giant knife on his belt.

He (SPOILERS!) actually kills the vampire with it, getting killed in the process, and Jonathan Harker (his buddy/love rival/co-vampire-hunter) marries Mina and names their son after him.

So, he's a decent guy, rough and ready, and not entirely civilized but noble in his own way. The novel, if you've never read it, is epistolary - it's told in letters, journal entries and news items. Quincey is, I believe, the only main character who is written about but never has a chance to do any writing himself.

Earlier than that, Mark Twain had done lecture tours of England in the 1870s and moved his family to Europe in the 1890s while he toured the world (he turned 60 in 1895). Huckleberry Finn was published in London before it was published in the United States... so he had a reputation at least as an entertaining writer and a witty public speaker.

Around that time (the 1880s), Oscar Wilde also made a sort of pilgrimage to visit Walt Whitman during an American tour. There are a few accounts of their first meeting - David Friedman wrote about it in New Republic before publishing a book on Wilde in America. He covers a little bit about the reputation Walt Whitman enjoyed overseas and how Whitman pioneered the art of building a literary persona.

Apparently, Stoker was a huge Whitman fan and met him in person in New Jersey shortly before writing Dracula, so maybe Quincey and Walt have a few things in common, too.