biography
| name: |
Austin, Mary
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née Hunter
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1868–1934)
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| biography:
| Writer and naturalist, born in Carlinville, Illinois, USA. She studied at Blackburn College (1888), then moved to California, where she married and settled in the Owens Valley. Her close observations of desert and Indian life there informed her first book, The Land of Little Rain (1903). After separating from her husband (1905), she lived in Carmel, CA and then New York City, where she became associated with the circle of Mabel Dodge who persuaded her to settle permanently in Santa Fe, NM (1924). The move rekindled her interest in the natural world of the desert and Indian culture, and she produced 32 books and more than 200 articles including poetry, realistic fiction (A Woman of Genius, 1912), and pioneering studies of Native American life (The American Rhythm, 1923). Her autobiography, Earth Horizon (1932), conveys the mystical, feminist, and socialist philosophy that she developed. |
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