A Mary Austin Reader

Best remembered for The Land of Little Rain (1903), which established her as a unique voice of the American West, Mary Austin was the author of nearly thirty books and hundreds of short works. Her essays, novels, plays, short stories, poems, and articles draw upon her impressions of the indigenous peoples and terrains of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Throughout her work, glimmers of her idiosyncratic feminism appear; not until long after her death in 1934 did she come to be celebrated for her feminist perspective. This anthology of Austin's stories, articles, and excerpts from her books represents the broad range of her writing over a career spanning four decades and helps illuminate the life and work of this major American writer. Each chapter focuses on a specific genre and includes an introduction by editor Esther Lanigan, herself an Austin biographer.