Austin, Mary
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1868-1934) US critic, poet, playwright and author of fiction and nonfiction, including studies of the natural world of the American South-West like The Land of Little Rain (1903), and Taos Pueblo (graph 1930) with photographs by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). Her involvement with Native American life and arts was intensified by Feminist arguments that women were similarly oppressed (see Race in SF; Women in SF). Of sf interest is Outland (1910 with George Sterling, writing together as by Gordon Stairs; 1919 as Mary Austin), a Lost Race tale set in deep in the mountains of southern California, where a civilization known as Outland has established an arcadian Utopia, threatened by a long feud with the Far-Folk; the principles espoused by the Outliers show the influence of William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890). Austin was close friends with many figures of the time, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman and H G Wells. [JC]
Mary Hunter Austin
born Carlinville, Illinois: 9 September 1868
died Santa Fe, New Mexico: 13 August 1934
works (highly selected)
- Outland (London: John Murray, 1910) with George Sterling, writing together as by Gordon Stairs [hb/]
- Outland (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919) as Mary Austin [first edition under her own name: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry