author
Elinore Pruitt Stewart
b. 1878
Best known for vivid letters from her years as a Wyoming homesteader, this American writer turned hard frontier work into warm, lively storytelling. Her books offer an unusually personal view of early 20th-century Western life, full of humor, grit, and independence.
2 Audiobooks
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
Letters on an Elk Hunt
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
About the author
Born in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, Elinore Pruitt Stewart became known for writing about the realities of frontier life from firsthand experience. Reliable sources disagree on her birth year: some library and reference records list 1878, while other biographical sources, including her Wikipedia entry and the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, give June 3, 1876.
After a difficult early life, she moved west and filed a homestead claim in Wyoming in 1909. The letters she wrote about ranch work, neighbors, storms, travel, and raising her daughter were first published in The Atlantic Monthly and later collected in Letters of a Woman Homesteader, the book that made her reputation.
She followed it with Letters on an Elk Hunt, continuing the same direct, spirited style that makes her writing feel fresh and immediate. Stewart died in 1933, but her work remains valued for its lively picture of homesteading and for the rare chance to hear a Western woman describe her own life in her own voice.