Born 1847 – Milton, NY Died 1938 – Hingham MA
Mary Hallock Foote grew up on a farm in Milton, NY, up the Hudson River from New York City. Life in the Hallock home included literature, interesting guests, and lively conversations. She was taught early to open her eyes and mind to what was around her. Her artistic talent was recognized early and encouraged by her Quaker family.
Hallock Foote attended the Poughkeepsie Female Seminary and received formal art training at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women in New York City. An expert engraver taught her techniques for drawing illustrations on wood blocks that were then used for printing. She became a highly sought-after book illustrator for top writers, including Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Tennyson. Hallock Foote was recognized as one of America’s preeminent illustrators and elected to the National Academy of Women Painters and Sculptors.
In 1876, she married Arthur De Wint Foote and followed him out West. She envisioned building a life together with a successful husband and then returning to the East. Her vision quickly evaporated as Foote’s ideas were either ahead of his time or unattainable, resulting in one job loss after another.
Hallock Foote had a lifelong correspondence with Helena Gilder, her closest friend and confidant and whose husband, Richard, was the editor of Scribner’s. He sought articles that accurately reflected the various regions across an expanding country. Based on Hallock Foote’s letters, he encouraged her to try writing articles for which she would be paid. As her income was often the sole support of a growing family, she agreed.
At the time, the Wild West was in large part a mythological story, written by the male authors of the day, including Harte, Twain, and Ingraham, portraying a patriarchal story of heroic masculinity and weak females who offered little, except to be used, protected,or rescued.
In contrast, Hallock Foote’s realistic novels were considered among the best written, with female characters who were full partners with their spouses in settling the new environments of the West. It is in those details of Hallock Foote’s writing that marks her early significance for literary scholars and historians. She had a very keen eye for observing the finer details of the physical, social, and political landscape and the roles played by both men and women.
When daughter Agnes died in the months prior to moving into North Star House, Hallock Foote entered a long period of mourning. When she surfaced, California had changed. Women now voted and, nationwide, it was the era of the New Woman, the first feminist wave. Women were encouraged to go to college, have careers and postpone marriage and, after marriage, have fewer children and be politically active.
Hallock Foote took pen to paper and wrote her most critically acclaimed and impactful novels. She wrote of women having a voice –being a New Woman – and she wrote from experience. She had lived the life of a New Woman decades before – going to college, having two exceptionally successful careers, and postponing marriage. History had finally caught up with Mary Hallock Foote.
By 1920, Hallock Foote was in her seventies and the public taste for literature had changed. It was at her children’s urging that she began writing her autobiography. Twenty-year-old male editors renamed her early draft A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West before rejecting it. Hallock Foote was branded with the Victorian Gentlewoman moniker for decades. It is only fairly recently that her later works have been rediscovered for their progressive themes.
She finished the autobiography despite being unable to find a publisher. Her offspring later negotiated with historian and author Wallace Stegner to edit the manuscript. Instead, he wrote a novel loosely based on Hallock-Foote’s life, with large segments copied from her letters, and retitled Angle of Repose, a phrase he also “borrowed” from Hallock Foote. He won a Pulitzer; Hallock Foote’s original version was published by the Huntington Library in 1972 and received minimal notice although her autobiography is now receiving recognition as one of her best works.
