Audiobook · read by volunteers
Story of Mary MacLane
Mary MacLane (1881–1929)
Read by Kristin Hughes (1974-2021) · 16 chapters · 5 h 20
About the book
In 1902, a nineteen-year-old woman from the mining town of Butte, Montana, published a book about herself, and the reading public could not stop talking about it. Mary MacLane wrote with startling frankness about her loneliness, her boredom, her moods, her ambition to be a genius and her passionate imaginary conversations with the Devil. Her sentences are impatient, funny, self-dramatising and strangely moving. She described the plain landscape around her with as much feeling as her own heart. The book sold in great numbers within weeks, delighted many young readers and shocked more conservative ones. Over sixteen parts, Kristin Hughes reads one of the most unusual diaries of its age, a voice that still sounds fresh and daring. Funny, proud and sometimes alarming, it is a diary like no other of its decade.
Introduction
Mary MacLane was born in 1881 and died in 1929. She grew up in Butte, Montana, a rough mining town that she found both ugly and fascinating. When she was nineteen she wrote the journal that became The Story of Mary MacLane, which was published in 1902. It sold about one hundred thousand copies in its first month, an extraordinary figure for the time, and it made her famous almost overnight. The critic H. L. Mencken, among others, mocked her, while many young readers took her side.
The book belongs to the tradition of confessional writing, but it is unusual for its tone. MacLane is not modest or apologetic. She writes about her desire for a different life, about her opinions of the people around her, and about a love that exists only in her imagination. Later critics have returned to the book as an early example of a frank female voice in American literature, and her style has been compared with modern memoir.
The LibriVox recording runs for about five hours and twenty minutes, split into 16 parts, and is read by Kristin Hughes. It is a curious and entertaining listen, and a reminder that youthful restlessness is not a new invention. The book is not always comfortable, and it is not meant to be. MacLane writes to be noticed and to be heard, and the reader hears an unusual voice demanding an answer. That sense of a mind insisting on itself is what has kept the book alive.
Whether you find her charming, exasperating or both, MacLane has an undeniable voice. Her book reads like an early cry of independence, and its blunt honesty makes a lively contrast with the more polite writing of the same decade.
Public domain
Mary MacLane died in 1929: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text