When this shocking confession/memoir/prose poem first appeared in 1902, the publisher blandly retitled it — against the author’s wishes — “The Story of Mary MacLane.” That sounds quite innocuous, and unlikely to draw the immediate wrath of the Morality Police. Yet even renamed, the book sold 100,000 copies within a month. How could it not? In its sensational pages, the 19-year-old Mary MacLane proudly described her strong young body, her love for another woman and utter indifference to her family, the deep loneliness of life in turn-of-the-century Montana, her sexual and mystical reveries, an occasional impulse to suicide and, not least, her greatest wish of all: to marry the Devil, or at least be his plaything for a few days.
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