Mary Austin, Land of Journey's Ending

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Written in the genre and form that first brought her fame,

The Land of Journey's Ending

(1924), a collection of sketches about the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, can be read as Austin's attempt to examine the cultures of Southwestern peoples and to understand from that study the effect of an idea she'd been working on in her translations of American Indian poetry—the idea of the landscape line (see entry on Austin's

The American Rhythm

for a fuller description of this idea). Weaving human and natural history together with ethnography, Austin creates a book that is meant, according to its authorial preface, as both prophecy and ritual, lyrically reiterating, and in many cases developing more fully, her familiar themes.

She evokes the difference between Native Americans' communal

672 words

Citation: Hoyer, Mark T.. "Land of Journey's Ending". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4124, accessed 19 March 2024.]

4124 Land of Journey's Ending 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.