Foote, Mary Hallock (1847–1938)

American author and illustrator. Born Mary Anna Hallock in Milton, New York, on November 19, 1847, of English Quaker ancestry; died in Hingham,Massachusetts, on June 25, 1938; attended the Poughkeepsie (NY) Female Collegiate Seminary and the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women; married Arthur De Wint Foote (a mining engineer), 1876.

Mary Hallock Foote was born in Milton, New York, on November 19, 1847, the daughter of English Quakers. She was educated at the Poughkeepsie (NY) Female Collegiate Seminary and at the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women, in New York. In 1876, she married Arthur De Wint Foote, a civil and mining engineer, and subsequently lived in the mining regions of Idaho, Colorado, California, and Mexico. As a popular illustrator, she was a frequent contributor to Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and Century, but she was best known for her stories and drawings depicting the mining life of the West. Though later tending toward the formulaic, some of her finest drawings appear in her own books, the best of which, some say, rival the works of Bret Harte. Among her publications are The Led-Horse Claim (1883), first serialized in Century, John Bodewin's Testimony (1886), The Last Assembly Ball (1889), The Chosen Valley (1892), Coeur d'Alene (1894); The Prodigal (1900), The Desert and the Sown (1902), The Royal Americans (1910), The Valley Road (1915), Edith Bonham (1917), and The Ground Swell (1919). Foote also produced several collections of short stories, including In Exile (1894) and A Touch of Sun (1903).