In her novels and romances Foote follows the conventions of Victorian novels and poetry, but her setting is the gritty frontier of the American West. The results of this incongruity are twofold: modern readers get a dated but fascinating glimpse into late-nineteenth-century attitudes about literature as well as realistic depictions of the commercial ventures that opened up the West for Anglo settlers and investors.
Born on 19 November 1847, Mary Hallock, the youngest child of Quaker parents Nathaniel and Anne Burling Hallock, grew up on the family farm outside Milton, New York, near the Hudson River. After high school she studied art at Cooper Union in New York City, where she excelled in woodcut illustrations. She made her professional debut in 1867 with four drawings published in A. D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi. Hallock soon was illustrating selections in The Century Magazine as well as books by Bret Harte and Constance Fenimore Woolson. Her biggest artistic honor was being asked to illustrate a gift edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Hanging of the Crane (1875) and to visit Boston to meet the famous man. During art school she began a lifelong friendship with a fellow student, Helena de Kay.
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