Mary MacLane (May 1, 1881 - August 1929)

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Mary MacLane (May 1, 1881 — August 1929) was a controversial Canadian-born writer, who won fame in the United States and other countries for her frank memoirs that helped to usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing.Having moved with her family to Butte, Montana, MacLane was dubbed the "Wild Woman of Butte".

MacLane was, according to her New York Times obituary, a very 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 uncontrolled, a reputation she nurtured. Oopenly bisexual, she was also a vocal feminist. In her writings, she compared herself to another frank young memoirist, Marie Bashkirtseff] who had died a few years after MacLane was born, and H. L. Mencken called her, "the Butte Bashkirtseff."

Early life and popularity

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 her father's death in 1889, her mother remarried a family friend and lawyer, H. Gysbert Klenze, and soon after the family moved to Montana, first settling in Great Falls and finally in Butte, where Klenze drained the family fund pursuing mining and other ventures.

May McLane spent the remainder of her life in the United States. MacLane began writing published material for her school paper in 1898. From the beginning, her writing was characterized by a direct, fiery and highly individualistic style. She was, however, also strongly influenced by such American regional realists as John Townsend Trowbridge (with whom she exchanged a few letters), Maria Louise Pool, and Hamlin Garland.

First Book: The Story of Mary McLane

At the age of 19 in 1902, MacLane published her first book, The Story of Mary MacLane. It sold 100,000 copies in the first month and was popular among young girls, but was pilloried by conservative critics and readers, and lightly ridiculed by H. L. Mencken.

McLane writes that she had always chafed, or felt, "anxiety of place," at living in Butte, which was a mining town far off from the centers of culture, and used the money from her first book's sales of this book to travel to Chicago, then Massachusetts, settling for a time in Rockland, Massachusetts from 1903–1908 and then in Greenwich Village from 1908–1909, where she continued writing and, by her own account, living a decadent and Bohemian existence. She was close friends with feminist writer Inez Haynes Irwin, who is mentioned in MacLane's private correspondence and appears in some of MacLane's 1910 newspaper writing in a Butte paper.

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.

In 1917 she wrote and starred in an autobiographical silent film titled Men Who Have Made Love to Me - now believed to be lost to time.<CITE?>

Among the numerous authors who referenced, parodied or answered MacLane was Gertrude Sanborn, who published an <optimistic?> riposte to MacLane's 1917 memoir I, Mary MacLane under the title I, Citizen of Eternity (1920).

MacLane died in Chicago sometime in early August 1929, aged 48. She was soon forgotten. A few bibliographers of lesbian life cited her work.<CITE? Gene Damon. Jeanette Foster?> Her body of prose remained out of print until late 1993, when The Story of Mary MacLane and some of her newspaper feature work was republished in an anthology titled Tender Darkness in 1993.

A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life

In January 2011, the publisher of Tender Darkness (1993) announced forthcoming publication of an integrated complete-works anthology and biography of MacLane, scheduled for publication in September 2011, to be titled A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Works, and Influence of Mary MacLane and issued under the Petrarca Press logo in multiple volumes totaling 1200+ pages.

Bibliography

Books by McLane

• The Story of Mary MacLane (1902)
• My Friend, Annabel Lee (1903)
• I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days (1917)
• Tender Darkness (reprint anthology) (1993)
• The Story of Mary MacLane and Other Writings (reprint anthology) (1999)

Publications by McLane, Chronological Order

MacLane, Mary Elizabeth. Untitled editorial on literature and censorship. Butte High School Leader, January 1898. (Only known from an excerpt printed in New York World, 13 July 1902, p 7; all copies of the Leader from MacLane's years as editor are said to have been destroyed by a fire at the Butte High School.)

- - - - - - - - - "Consider Thy Youth and Therein." Editorial on stoicism. Butte High School Leader, Spring 1899. (Excerpt printed in New York World, 13 July 1902, p 7.)

- - - - - - - - - "Charles Dickens - Best of Castle-Builders." High School oration. (Only known from a long excerpt printed in Butte Miner, 13 May 1899, p 8.)

- - - - - - - - - The Story of Mary MacLane - by Herself. Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago, April 1902. (British edition published by Grant Richards, London, November 1902. Foreign-language editions not yet located. Microfilmed in 1980 by Microfilming Corp. of America for inclusion in the Gerritsen Collection of Women's History.)

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane at Newport." New York World, 24 August 1902, Sunday magazine, p 1.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane at Coney Island." New York World, 31 August 1902, Sunday magazine, p 1.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane on Wall Street." New York World, 7 September 1902, Sunday magazine, p 1.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane in Little Old New York." New York World, 14 September 1902, Sunday magazine, pp 6-7.

- - - - - - - - - "On Marriage." New York World, 9 November 1902, Sunday magazine, p 5.

- - - - - - - - - My Friend Annabel Lee. Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago, 1903. Reissued by Duffield & Co., New York, 1908.

- - - - - - - - - ["Four Years Later."] Associated Sunday Newspapers syndicate, early 1906. (12000-word autobiographical essay on MacLane's life and thoughts in the years after publication of The Story; copy not yet located, but letters to M.E. Stone (Newberry collection) confirm publication.)

- - - - - - - - - ["Caruso in the Metropolitan."] Untitled, almost certainly unpublished feature article giving impressions of Caruso in Aida and of the opera-goers. (Written in January 1909 for the New York Evening Journal; MS in Newberry collection.)

- - - - - - - - - "The Second Story of Mary MacLane." Butte Evening News, 23 January 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane Soliloquizes on Scarlet Fever - and Other Things." Butte Evening News, 20 March 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane Meets the Vampire on the Isle of Treacherous Delights." Butte Evening News, 27 March 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "The Autobiography of the Kid Primitive." Butte Evening News, 3 April 1910, pp 9-10. (Subsequently syndicated; appeared in, e.g., Morrison's Chicago Weekly, 19 January 1911.)

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane Wants a Vote - For the Other Woman." Butte Evening News, 17 April 1910, p 9. (Subsequently syndicated; appeared in, e.g., the Chicago Sunday Tribune, 20 November 1910, under the title "Mary MacLane Believes in Woman [sic] Suffrage, But She Would Never Vote for a Fat President.")

- - - - - - - - - "Men Who Have Made Love to Me." Butte Evening News, 24 April 1910, p 9, 10. (Subsequently syndicated; appeared in, e.g., Morrison's Chicago Weekly, 2 Feb-ruary 1911.)

- - - - - - - - - "Butte Society - `The Lady in Green Tights.'" Butte Evening News, 1 May 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "The Latter-Day Litany of Mary MacLane." Butte Evening News, 8 May 1910, p 9. (Subsequently syndicated; appeared in, e.g., the Indianapolis Sunday Star, 12 February 1911.)

- - - - - - - - - "The Borrower of Two-Dollar Bills - And Other Women." Butte Evening News, May 15, 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "A Waif of Destiny on the High Seas." Butte Evening News, 22 May 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "The Big Fight `Has Something Doing.'" Butte Evening News, 3 July 1910, p 9.

- - - - - - - - - "Woman and the Cigarette." Morrison's Chicago Weekly, 9 February 1911.

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane Says - " Chicago Sunday Tribune, 10 September 1911, Part VII, p 1. (Clipping in Newberry collection; may be one of a series.)

- - - - - - - - - The Story of Mary MacLane - By Herself - New Edition With a Chapter on the Present. Duffield & Co., New York, 1912. (Contains a lengthy autobiographical appendix on MacLane's life since The Story's original publication.)

- - - - - - - - - I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days. Frederick Stokes, New York, 1917. (Microfilmed in 1980 by Microfilming Corp. of America for inclusion in the Gerritsen Collection of Women's History.)

- - - - - - - - - Men Who Have Made Love to Me. Screenplay for Essanay Studios, Chicago, 1917. (Based on the Butte Evening News feature article. The film dramatized six of MacLane's love-affairs. The film was produced in late 1917 with MacLane starring as herself, edited to 90 minutes in length over either seven or eight reels, and released nationally in January 1918. Cf. Mattern pp 31-32 and Brownlow pp 30-33. Further information on the film is contained in files at the Film Study Center of the Museum of Modern Art and in the Library of Congress. Neither the screenplay nor a print of the film has yet been located.)

- - - - - - - - - "Mary MacLane on Marriage." Chicago Herald, 24 June 1917.

- - - - - - - - - "The Movies and Me." Photoplay Magazine, January 1918.

- - - - - - - - - (Letter.) "Notes and Queries" department, American Mercury, October 1925. (Letter responding to a reader's request for information on her present doings.)

- - - - - - - - - The Story of Mary MacLane. Jonathan Cape, London, 1981. (Photo-duplication of 1902 Stone edition, with an introduction by Michael Yocum.)

- - - - - - - - - The Story of Mary MacLane. Reprint Services, Irvine [California], 1991. (Photo-duplication of 1902 Stone edition.)

Bibliography, Alphabetical

"Hates All Men Except Two: Mary McLane: Reveals Names Of Her Ideals". The Evening News (Sam Jose, California), July 26, 1904, page 3. Accessed online July 31, 2011 from http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=myUiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_KMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2051,940340&dq=mary+mclane&hl=en

Pruitt, Elisabeth (editor). Bibliography from Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology (1993).

Screenplays and Filmography

• Men Who Have Made Love to Me (1917)<CITE?>

Books Mentioning Mary MacLane

Atherton, Gertrude. Perch of the Devil. Frederick Stokes, New York,1914, pp 37, 173.

- - - - - - - - - . Adventures of a Novelist, Liveright, New York, 1932, pp 490-492.

Burlingame, Merrill K. and Toole, K. R. A History of Montana. Lewis Historical Publishing Co., New York, 1957, vol. II, p 286.

Brooks, Van Wyck. The Confident Years. Dutton, New York, 1952, pp 319-320, 469.

Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence and Crime - Films of Social<%0> Conscience in the Silent Era. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1990, pp 30-33, 514-515.

Canfield, Mary Cass. Grotesques - and other reflections. Harper & Bros., New York, 1927, pp 48-60. (Essay on I, Mary MacLane. Originally appeared as "Mary MacLane and the Apparent Agonies of Introspective Pathology," under the by-line "Peter Savage," in Vanity Fair, June 1917.)

Davenport, Warren. Butte and Montana Beneath the X-Ray - being a collection of editorials from the files of the Butte X-Ray during the years 1907-1908. X-Ray Publishing Co., Butte, 1908.

Derleth, August. Still, Small Voice. Appleton-Century, New York, 1940, pp 58-59. (Biography of MacLane's New York World interviewer, Zona Gale.)

Doran, George H. Chronicles of Barrabas (1884-1934), Harcourt-Brace, New York, 1934, p 30.

Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women From the Renaissance to the Present. William Morrow, New York, 1981, pp 299-300.

- - - - - - - - - . Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in America. Columbia University Press, New York, 1991, p 113.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence and Nancy Peters. Literary San Francisco. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1980, p 92.

Foster, Jeannette Howard. Sex Variant Women in Literature. Vantage, New York, 1956. (Reprinted by Diana Press, Baltimore, 1975.)

Garland, Hamlin. Companions on the Trail. MacMillan, New York, 1931, p 147.

Goddard, Alan. Oldtimer's Handbook Illustrated. Bumont Press, Butte, 1976, p 43.

Hall, Dr G. Stanley. Adolescence - its psychology, and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education. Appleton, New York, 1904, vol. 1, p 559-560; vol. II, p 629.

Hanson, Patrick and Stephen Hanna. Film Review Index. Oryx Press, Phoenix, 1986, p 188.

Kaplan, Bert. The Inner World of Mental Illness. Harper & Row, New York, 1964, pp 263-279. (Reprints excerpts from The Story, with an introductory note.)

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Gay American History. Meridian, New York, 1992. (Rev. ed.; orig. pub. 1976.)

Kittredge, William and Annick Smith, eds. The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991. (Reprints passages from The Story and I, Mary MacLane.)

Kramer, Sidney. A History of Stone & Kimball and Herbert S. Stone & Co., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1940.

McKown, [Mrs.] T.D. The Devil's Letters to Mary MacLane. Interstate Book Co., Chicago, 1903. (Parody of The Story. Published anonymously; authorship information on record with the Library of Congress.)

Mencken, H.L. "The Butte Bashkirtseff," in Prejudices - first series, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1919, pp 123-128.

Nyland, Waino. A Famous Mining Camp in Literature. Unpublished manuscript, 1926, p 5. (Cited in Pascoe, p 8; MS in Butte-Silver Bow Public Library collection.)

Richards, Dell. Lesbian Lists. Alyson Publications, Boston, 1990.

Ross, Ishbell. Ladies of the Press. Harper, New York, 1936, p 419.

Rudnick, Lois Palken. Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1984, pp 139-140.

Shores, Robert T. The Story of Willie Complain. Intermountain Publishing Co., Butte, 1902. (Parody of The Story.)

Spacks, Patricia Meyers. The Female Imagination. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1975, pp 6, 166, 171-180, 182, 184, 189, 192, 205, 218, 250, 316, 317.

Truitt, Evelyn M. Who Was Who on Screen. R.R. Bowker & Co., New York, 1977, p 293.

Workers of the Writers's Program of the W.P.A. in the State of Montana. Montana - A State Guide Book. The Viking Press, New York, 1939, p 103.

- - - - - - - - - . Copper Camp: Stories of the World's Greatest Mining Town - Butte, Montana. Hastings House, New York, 1943, pp 1, 257-258.

Further reading

• 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. "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

• "Mary MacLane's Story to be Told At Last" - 2011 press release for forthcoming multi-volume set

• Introduction to Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology - edited by Elisabeth Pruitt

• marymaclane.com - Website maintained by the publisher of Tender Darkness, Michael Brown

• "Hot Love, Sexual radicals bookend the century - by Carol Lynn Mithers

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