observed in the old West, especially that in the early mining towns. She was one of America's best-known women illustrators in the 1870s and 1880s. She illustrated stories and novels by other authors including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Bret Harte, and others. Foote exhibited her work at The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Mary Foote gained renown as a welcoming and sophisticated hostess to dignitaries and celebrities traveling through the environs of her (successive) homesteads in the West. After 1905, when she and her husband built North Star House (also known as Foote Mansion) and made permanent settlement in Grass Valley, California, she presided for some 30 years over many and historic social and civic events there. After her death, Foote fell into obscurity. Thirty-four years after her death, historian Rodman Paul's 1972 edition of Foote's unpublished memoir, A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West, helped to spur renewed interest in her life and work. However, her letters—which provide what amounts to a biography of her husband as well as her own autobiography—have never been published except as brief excerpts in various areas of research. Death and legacy Mary Hallock Foote died June 25, 1938, at age 90. Her legacy in American history is as a stalwart of the American Old West and a teller of its stories. Her work—the numerous stories for books and periodicals, with her drawings and woodcut illustrations; the correspondence from western outposts; her novels and nonfiction—gained her notice as a skilled observer of the frontier and an accomplished writer. Her life expressed the civilizing influence of the educated eastern gentlewoman on life in the chaotic mining and "ditch" camps (irrigation-project construction camps) of the early American West and, conversely, the stimulating effect of those "old West" environs on the prepared mind, that is, one educated for illustrating and telling the story. Controversy Wallace Stegner's novel Angle of Repose (Pulitzer Prize, 1972) is based directly upon Mary Hallock Foote's extensive personal correspondence. Stegner used the outline of her life ostensibly with permission from members of Foote's family—on proviso that he disguise the source, which, in his judgment, he did. After publication, however, some descendants objected to "the great liberties" taken by Stegner in using Foote's story. On the opposite hand, Stegner used passages taken directly from Foote's letters and her reminiscences without providing specific credit; this