= Mary_MacLane =

======================================================================
= Mary_MacLane =
======================================================================

Introduction
======================================================================
Mary MacLane (May 1, 1881 - 'c'. August 6, 1929) was a controversial
Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the
confessional style of autobiographical writing. MacLane was known as
the "Wild Woman of Butte".

MacLane was a popular author for her time, scandalizing the populace
with her shocking bestselling first memoir and to a lesser extent her
two following books. She was considered wild and uncontrollable, a
reputation she nurtured, and was openly bisexual as well as a vocal
feminist. In her writings, she compared herself to another frank young
memoirist, Marie Bashkirtseff, who died a few years after MacLane was
born, and H. L. Mencken called her "the Butte Bashkirtseff".

Early life and family
======================================================================
MacLane was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1881, but her family
moved to the Red River area of Minnesota, settling in Fergus Falls,
which her father helped develop. After his death in 1889, her mother
remarried a family friend and lawyer, H. Gysbert Klenze. Soon after,
the family moved to Montana, first settling in Great Falls and finally
in Butte, where Klenze drained the family funds pursuing mining and
other ventures. MacLane spent the remainder of her life in the United
States. She began writing for her school paper in 1897.

Writing & Film
======================================================================
From the beginning, MacLane's writing was characterized by a direct,
fiery, individualistic style. She was, however, also influenced by
such American regional realists as John Townsend Trowbridge (with whom
she exchanged a few letters), Maria Louise Pool, and Hamlin Garland.

In 1901, MacLane wrote her first book, which she originally titled 'I
Await the Devil's Coming'. Prior to the manuscript's printing the
following year, MacLane's publisher, Herbert S. Stone & Company,
altered the title to 'The Story of Mary MacLane.' The book proved to
be an immediate success, especially among young women, selling over
100,000 copies during its first month of release. It, however, was
pilloried by conservative critics and readers, and even lightly
ridiculed by H. L. Mencken.

Some critics have suggested that even by today's standards, MacLane's
writing is raw, honest, unflinching, self-aware, sensual, and extreme.
She wrote openly about egoism and her own self-love, about sexual
attraction and love for other women, and even about her desire to
marry the Devil.

Her second book, 'My Friend Annabel Lee', was published by Stone in
1903. More experimental in style than her debut book, it was not as
sensational, though MacLane was said to have made a fairly large
amount of money.

Her final book, 'I, Mary Maclane: A Diary of Human Days' was published
by Frederick A. Stokes in 1917 and sold moderately well but may have
been overshadowed by America's recent entry into World War I.

In 1917, she wrote and starred in the 90-minute autobiographical
silent film titled 'Men Who Have Made Love to Me', for Essanay
Studios. Produced by film pioneer George Kirke Spoor and based on
MacLane's 1910 article of the same title for a Butte newspaper, it has
been speculated to have been an extremely early, if not the earliest,
sustained breaking of the fourth wall in cinema, with the writer-star
directly addressing the audience. Though stills and some subtitles
have survived, the film is now believed to be lost.

She was also known in her time for the mysterious 'Slanting Annie'
cocktail, which purportedly sent reporters and bartenders reeling.
("Whole City Guessing. Mary MacLane Nominates a New Poison. Bartenders
up a Tree. Confess They Don’t Know What a ‘Slanting Annie’ Is" was an
admiring headline in The Montana Daily Record, May 9, 1902.) Published
in thirty languages, her first and most famous work engendered
several parodies.

Influence
======================================================================
Among the numerous authors who referenced, parodied, or answered
MacLane were Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harriet Monroe, lawyer
Clarence Darrow, Ring Lardner Jr., Sherwood Anderson and Daniel Clowes
in Ice Haven. Gertrude Sanborn published an optimistic riposte to
MacLane's 1917 'I, Mary MacLane' under the title 'I, Citizen of
Eternity' (1920).

Personal life
======================================================================
MacLane had always chafed, or felt, "'anxiety' of place", at living in
Butte, a mining city far from cultural centers, and used the money
from her first book's sales to travel to Chicago and then throughout
the East Coast. She lived in Rockland, Massachusetts, wintering in St.
Augustine, Florida, from 1903 to 1908, then in Greenwich Village from
1908 to 1909, where she continued writing and, by her later published
accounts, living a decadent and Bohemian existence. She was close
friends with the feminist writer Inez Haynes Irwin, who is referenced
in some of MacLane's 1910 writing in a Butte newspaper and who in turn
mentioned MacLane in a 1911 magazine article.

For a period, she lived with her friend Caroline M. Branson, who had
been the long-time companion of Maria Louise Pool until the latter's
death in 1898. They lived in the Rockland house that Pool left to
Branson. Mary Maclane also had a multi-decade friendship with Harriet
Monroe.

MacLane died in Chicago in early August 1929, aged 48. She was less
frequently discussed through the mid to late 20th century, and her
prose remained out of print until late 1993, when 'The Story of Mary
MacLane' and some of her newspaper feature work was republished in
'Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology'.

Contemporary collections and performances
======================================================================
In 2025, the first biography of MacLane - 'Mary MacLane: Herself', by
Michael R. Brown - was published.

In 2014, the publisher of 'Tender Darkness' (1993) published an
expanded anthology titled 'Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader' (with a
Foreword by Bojana Novakovic).

In 2011, Novakovic wrote and performed "The Story of Mary MacLane - By
Herself" in Melbourne, Australia, which was subsequently staged in
Sydney, Australia in 2012.

In the 2010s, MacLane's first book was translated into
[https://www.editions-du-sous-sol.com/publication/que-le-diable-memporte/
French], [http://basilisk.dk/bog/mary_maclanes_fortaelling.htm
Danish], and
[https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-deseo-que-venga-el-diablo/189149
Spanish]. Reclam published a German edition of 'I Await the Devil's
Coming' in 2020, followed by 2021 editions of 'My Friend Annabel Lee'
and I, Mary MacLane.

Books
=======
* 'The Story of Mary MacLane' (1902)
* 'My Friend Annabel Lee' (1903)
* 'The Story of Mary MacLane - Past and Present' (1911)
* 'I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days' (1917, 2013)
* 'The Story of Mary MacLane' ed. Michael Yokum (1981 UK reprint of
1911 'The Story of Mary MacLane - Past and Present')
* 'Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology' (reprint anthology, ed.
Elisabeth Pruitt) (1993)
* 'The Story of Mary MacLane and Other Writings' (reprint anthology,
ed. Penelope Rosemont) (1997)
* 'Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader' (ed. Michael R. Brown, foreword
by Bojana Novakovic) (2014)
* 'I Await the Devil's Coming' (2013)

Selected articles
===================
* The Uninitiated (editorial, October 1897)
* [Untitled editorial on stoicism] (January, 1898)
* Consider Thy Youth and Therein (editorial, April 1899)
* Charles Dickens - Best of Castle-Builders (graduate oration, May
1899)
* Mary MacLane at Newport (1902)
* Mary MacLane at Coney Island (1902)
* Mary MacLane on Wall Street (1902)
* Mary MacLane in Little Old New York (1902)
* On Marriage (1902)
* A Foreground and a Background (1903)
* Mary MacLane Discusses the 'Outward Seeming of Denver' (1903)
* He Loves Me (1903)
* The Second 'Story of Mary MacLane' (1909)
* Mary MacLane Soliloquizes on Scarlet Fever (1910)
* Mary MacLane Meets the Vampire on the Isle of Treacherous Delights
(1910)
* The Autobiography of the Kid Primitive (1910)
* Mary MacLane Wants a Vote - For the Other Woman (1910)
* Men Who Have Made Love to Me (1910)
* The Latter-Day Litany of Mary MacLane (1910)
* The Borrower of Two-Dollar Bills - and Other Women (1910)
* A Waif of Destiny on the High Seas (1910)
* Woman and the Cigarette (1911)
* Mary MacLane Says - (1911 - article on fashion and feminism)
* Mary MacLane on Marriage (1917)
* The Movies and Me (1918)
* The Rebirth of Russia (1918 - review of Isaac Marcosson's account of
the liberal, pre-Communist revolution)
* Mencken's Latest Book (1919 - review of 'Prejudices - First Series')

Screenplays and filmography
=============================
* 'Men Who Have Made Love to Me' (1918)

In popular culture
======================================================================
The 2020 novel 'Plain Bad Heroines' features MacLane's life and work
as a recurring interest for multiple characters in the book, which
draws its title from a passage from MacLane's 'The Story of Mary
MacLane'.

Further reading
======================================================================
* Halverson, Cathryn. "The Devil and Desire in Butte, Montana." In
'Maverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West,
1900-1936.' Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography series, William L.
Andrews, general editor. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
[https://archive.org/embed/maverickautobiog0000halv Borrowable at
Internet Archive].
* Mattern, Carolyn J., "Mary MacLane: A Feminist Opinion", 'Montana
The Magazine of Western History', 27 (Autumn 1977), 54-63.
* Miller, Barbara, "'Hot as Live Embers--Cold as Hail': The Restless
Soul of Butte's Mary MacLane", 'Montana Magazine', September 1982,
50-53.
* Terris, Virginia R., "Mary MacLane--Realist", 'The Speculator',
Summer 1985, 42-49.
* Wheeler, Leslie A., "Montana's Shocking 'Lit'ry Lady'", 'Montana The
Magazine of Western History', 27 (Summer 1977), 20-33.

External links
======================================================================
* [https://www.marymaclane.com/ Website with biography, photos,
private letters, reviews]
* [http://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-MacLane/ Encyclopædia
Britannica article by Julia Watson]
*
[https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-forgotten-story-of-mary-maclane-1902s-racy-angsty-teenage-diarist/274149/
2013 Atlantic article by Hope Reese]
* [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-i-am-a-thief/ 2013
New Yorker article]
*
*
*
* [https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-mary-maclane/ Mary MacLane at
Women Film Pioneers Project]

License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacLane