The Road to the Spring

<p>The Road to the Spring is the first book publication of Mary Austin’s<br> (1868–1934) poems. Best known for her prose book The Land of Little<br> Rain (1903), Austin was in fact a poet from the beginning of her career to<br> the end, even though she never published a volume dedicated to her own<br> original poetry. Instead, Austin’s work came to light in collections of poetry<br> and in prestigious journals such as Poetry, the Nation, the Forum, Harper’s,<br> and Saturday Review of Literature, among many others.<br> The Road to the Spring contains more than 200 poems, most of which<br> can only be found in out-of-print books, magazines, and periodicals, and<br> her unpublished manuscripts archived at the Huntington Library. This singular<br> publication includes her original work, poems she claimed to have<br> written with her grammar school pupils at the end of the nineteenth century,<br> and her translations and "re-expressions" of Native American songs,<br> which often diverge greatly from any other known sources. Warren includes<br> an introduction, laying out Austin’s place in American literature and<br> situating her writings in feminist, environmentalist, regionalist, and Native<br> American contexts. He also includes notes for those new to Austin’s work,<br> glossing Native terms, geographical names, and the ethnological sources<br> of the Native songs she re-creates.</p>

<p>James Perrin Warren is S. Blount Mason, Jr. Professor of English<br> at Washington and Lee University.</p>