Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain

Mark T. Hoyer (University of California, Davis)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1903

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

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Essays/ Lectures (any)

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The Land of Little Rain

(1903), a collection of fourteen sketches, is considered by many to be Mary Austin's masterpiece and a classic in the field of American nature writing. Following some minor successes publishing poems and short stories in magazines such as

The Atlantic Monthly

and

The Overland Monthly

Land

is Austin's first book-length work, one that allowed her to move at least into the periphery of the national literary scene if not, as Austin hoped, into its center. On the basis of this one book alone, Austin has been compared as an environmental thinker to Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, and as a literary regionalist to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Willa Cather.

In fourteen chapters Austin's narrator records her observations of the land and its inhabitants,

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1323 words

Citation: Hoyer, Mark T.. "The Land of Little Rain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=389, accessed 03 December 2024.]

Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain

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