The Story of Mary MacLane

The Story of Mary MacLane shocked the literary world when it was published in April 1902. It sold 100,000 copies in its first month, an astonishing number then and now. Within a few years it had been translated into 36 languages, and writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, and Gertrude Stein lauded it as an important influence in their quests for a new American style.

The author was a 19-year-old girl from the raw, masculine mining town of Butte, Montana. With the publication of this book, Mary MacLane became an overnight sensation. She was called the ‘Wild Woman of Butte,’ a Bohemian, a radical, a feminist, a rebel. Although MacLane went on to write other books, none had the impact of this one, which remains a tour de force about life, love, and longing. Fresh, frank, and funny, ‘The Story of Mary MacLane’ is as powerful today as it was provocative when first published.