Mary Austin

(1868 - 1934)

Mary Austin is best known for her depiction of the American Southwest in her book The Land of Little Rain, which she began writing in the fall of 1900—when “life stood at a breathing pause between the old ways and the new.” A feminist, a suffragist, and an early proponent of birth control, she was said to speak rarely: “Her utterance is rather slow and her remarks are usually grave. The desert has cloistered her.”