The Road to the Spring

The Road to the Spring is the first book publication of Mary Austin s

(1868 1934) poems. Best known for her prose book The Land of Little

Rain (1903), Austin was in fact a poet from the beginning of her career to

the end, even though she never published a volume dedicated to her own

original poetry. Instead, Austin s work came to light in collections of poetry

and in prestigious journals such as Poetry, the Nation, the Forum, Harper s,

and Saturday Review of Literature, among many others.

The Road to the Spring contains more than 200 poems, most of which

can only be found in out-of-print books, magazines, and periodicals, and

her unpublished manuscripts archived at the Huntington Library. This singular

publication includes her original work, poems she claimed to have

written with her grammar school pupils at the end of the nineteenth century,

and her translations and "re-expressions" of Native American songs,

which often diverge greatly from any other known sources. Warren includes

an introduction, laying out Austin s place in American literature and

situating her writings in feminist, environmentalist, regionalist, and Native

American contexts. He also includes notes for those new to Austin s work,

glossing Native terms, geographical names, and the ethnological sources

of the Native songs she re-creates."