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".

Writing and film

thumb|175px|MacLane depicted on inside cover of a 1902 edition of The Story of Mary MacLane

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.

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, 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",

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 French, Danish, and 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.

Bibliography

200px|right|thumb|The first page of the original 1901 manuscript of I Await the Devil's Coming (renamed to The Story of Mary MacLane when published in 1902)

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)

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.

References

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. 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.
  • Website with biography, photos, private letters, reviews
  • Encyclopædia Britannica article by Julia Watson
  • 2013 Atlantic article by Hope Reese
  • 2013 New Yorker article
  • Mary MacLane at Women Film Pioneers Project