Starting with her nostalgically remembered childhood on a Quaker farm on the Hudson River, Mary Hallock Foote tells the story of her training as an artist in the 1860s and of her marriage to a mining engineer whose jobs took the young couple west in the closing days of the frontier. She left the east, but not her career in book illustration. While moving from place to place with her husband, she also became a popular and widely published author, describing in her novels what it meant to be a woman in the American West during the late nineteenth century. Her story inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
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Foote's work was a combination of history, keen observation, and sheer love for the landscape of the West. -- Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003
Mrs. Foote's realistic vision clearly marks her reminiscences; and her mature style makes the reading smooth and interesting. -- Western American Literature
Paul demonstrates a rare sensitivity, even compassion, for this talented woman and those she loved. -- The Historical Society of Southern California
Paul's superb edition makes clear the reason that this woman and her work suddenly seem important subjects for consideration. -- Western American Literature
Such reminiscences provide the research sources for the innovative and imaginative history of American women being written today. -- California Historical Quarterly
The book, well edited and footnoted, is heightened in value by the profusion of Mrs. Foote's own excellent illustrations. -- Utah Historical Quarterly
These reminiscences make for delightful reading . . . This book is a sensitive account of the struggles of a woman torn between her need for like- minded friends, for cultivation, and her love of the beauty and vigor of the West with all its harshness . . . The book, well edited and footnoted, is heightened in value by the profusion of Mrs. Foote's own excellent illustrations. -- Utah Historical Quarterly
Mrs. Foote's realistic vision clearly marks her reminiscences; and her mature style makes the reading smooth and interesting. -- Western American Literature
Paul demonstrates a rare sensitivity, even compassion, for this talented woman and those she loved. -- The Historical Society of Southern California
Paul's superb edition makes clear the reason that this woman and her work suddenly seem important subjects for consideration. -- Western American Literature
Such reminiscences provide the research sources for the innovative and imaginative history of American women being written today. -- California Historical Quarterly
The book, well edited and footnoted, is heightened in value by the profusion of Mrs. Foote's own excellent illustrations. -- Utah Historical Quarterly
These reminiscences make for delightful reading . . . This book is a sensitive account of the struggles of a woman torn between her need for like- minded friends, for cultivation, and her love of the beauty and vigor of the West with all its harshness . . . The book, well edited and footnoted, is heightened in value by the profusion of Mrs. Foote's own excellent illustrations. -- Utah Historical Quarterly
About the Author
Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938) was a highly successful writer and illustrator of stories and novels about the West.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Victorian Gentlewoman with True Grit,
By Jerry Cowley (Boise, Idaho) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote (Huntington Library Classics) (Paperback)
Mary Hallock Foote came west with her engineer husband Arthur D. Foote, a dreamer-engineer, to build dams, lay out canals, and tame the vast desert areas. While they waited through one frustration after another with various backers, she kept the family solvent with her delightful sketches and stories, all the while raising her children on the boundary of civilization. Oh, that's with the help of a proper English tutor, of course.Her prose is grandiloquent in the early chapters, something of an annoying Victorian mannerism in my mind. She lavishes compliments with abandon on her family and associates, as well as the landscape. Thank goodness the editors carefully footnoted Mrs. Foote! Otherwise the reader wouldn't have a clue as to whom she was writing about so ecstatically. (Actually, the volume is soundly annotated and edited throughout.) However, in the later chapters, when the family settles down in Idaho, near what was to be the highest dam in the world at the time, the Arrowrock, her prose deepens and her style strengthens. She begins to incorporate her western life, the engineers and workers lives, into her stories. The geological phrase, "Angle of Repose," emerges in this section. The prose, like the work, becomes purposeful in its passion. Is is, after all, of Mary Hallock Foote and her husband, Arthur, that Wallace Stegner wrote in his Pulitzer prize-winning fictional account, "The Angle of Repose." Here we really get the story in the words of those who lived it. The frustrations of engineering the dam and engineering the financial and political backing are superbly related. The latter half of the book is more than worth the slower early portion. The account it bears of life in the early western United States is a treasure of its times. I heartily recommend it.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West,
By Jean (Boulder Creek, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote (Huntington Library Classics) (Paperback)
Read Angle of Repose and then read this. Each book makes the other one even more touching and interesting.
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