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Mary Austin
1868–1934
Best known for vivid writing about the American Southwest, this early conservation-minded author brought desert landscapes, Native communities, and frontier life into American literature with unusual clarity and feeling. Her work blends sharp observation with a strong sense of place, making it still memorable more than a century later.
10 Audiobooks
The Land of Little Rain
by Mary Austin
The Land of Little Rain
by Mary Austin
The Trail Book
by Mary Austin
California: The Land of the Sun
by Mary Austin
The Arrow-Maker: A Drama in Three Acts
by Mary Austin
A Woman of Genius
by Mary Austin
The Basket Woman: A Book of Indian Tales for Children
by Mary Austin
The Lovely Lady
by Mary Austin
Outland
by Mary Austin
The Land of Little Rain
by Mary Austin
About the author
Born in Illinois in 1868, Mary Austin grew up partly in California and became one of the most distinctive writers of the American West. She is especially remembered for The Land of Little Rain (1903), a lyrical, closely observed book about the desert country of the Southwest and the people who lived there.
Austin wrote fiction, essays, plays, and social criticism, often drawing on her experiences in California, New Mexico, and the wider Southwest. Her work showed a lasting interest in nature, regional culture, and Indigenous life, and she became known as an important literary voice connected with both western writing and early conservation thought.
She spent important years in places including the Owens Valley and later New Mexico, where she moved in artistic and intellectual circles while continuing to publish widely. Mary Austin died in 1934, but her writing remains valued for its strong sense of landscape and its effort to capture the character of the American Southwest.