2013 Essays

Mary MacLane

Buck, Julie

MacLane’s name was rarely out of the newspapers between 1902 and 1917, the publication dates of her first and last books. Particularly after the first book, newspapers tracked her movements as she traveled to Chicago, then eastward. She arrived in Boston, hoping to attend Radcliffe College, but was turned away for lack of scholarship, and finally moved on to New York, where she settled in Greenwich Village and, according to Western historian Cathryn Halverson, was finally able to live the bohemian life she had so craved (66). When public attention began to wane, MacLane would give interviews and write articles capturing the ennui of being a public figure, or, as in a 1910 Chicago Daily Tribune article, she might claim to be looking for a husband in order to create good copy (G3). After contracting scarlet fever in 1911, Mary returned to Butte to write her final novel, I, Mary MacLane, which was published in 1917 (Halverson 71). While this book did not approach the success of her first, it did catch the attention of George Spoor, who ran Essanay Studios in Chicago.