Plain Anne Ellis builds on Life of an Ordinary Woman, Anne Ellis’s memoir of life in one of Colorado’s most overlooked regions, the San Luis Valley. Despite use and settlement by Utes, Hispanics, Jicarilla Apaches, and Anglos, little has been written about the rich history of this valley. Ellis describes herself as an ordinary widow with few financial resources trying to make a living in an inaccessible valley. But Ellis was far from ordinary: she raised children on her own, sent them to college, worked as a cook and the only woman on crews installing telephone lines and building roads to open the San Luis Valley to development, and successfully ran for county treasurer. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Ellis was her frankness. Ellis admitted that "to have been born in the Victorian era certainly cramps one’s style." She was not afraid to put into print her desire for intimacy and love. This and other observations of her life make it clear that Anne Ellis was anything but plain and ordinary.

A highly readable exploration of the factors that enhanced and restricted the success of women artists in the West during the 20th century.

The autobiography has not always been acknowledged as true literature. Since 1970, however, American memoirs have revealed themselves as a respectable literary genre, distinct with an inimitable literary voice and a unique capacity to intersect narration and reflection. This study focuses critical attention on ten memoirs from the northern U.S. Rockies, including Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. By comparing memoirs representing states that share similar demographic, ecological, and socio-economic characteristics, this historic and literary analysis reveals both commonalities and divergences among American Western memoirs. Each chapter compares two books of similar thematic concerns, ranging from regional values and rural evolution to dynamic landscapes and the experiences of American Indians.

Over 200 writings about Nevada with selections from Native American tales to contemporary writings on urban experience and environmental concerns. The state of Nevada embodies paradox and contradiction—home to one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and to isolated ranches scattered across a sparsely populated backcountry. Nevada is a place where the lust for sudden wealth has prompted both wild mining booms and glittering casinos, and where forbidding atomic test sites coexist with alluring tourist meccas. The variety and distinctiveness of Nevada’s landscape and peoples have inspired writers from the beginning of immigrant contact with the region. This contact has produced abundant literary wealth that includes the rich oral traditions of Native American peoples and an amazing spectrum of contemporary voices. Literary Nevada is the first comprehensive literary anthology of Nevada. It contains over 200 selections ranging from traditional Native American tales, explorers’ and emigrants’ accounts, and writing from the Comstock Lode and other mining boomtowns, as well as compelling fiction, poetry, and essays from throughout the state’s history. There is work by well-known Nevada writers such as Sarah Winnemucca, Mark Twain, and Robert Laxalt, by established and emerging writers from all parts of the state, and by some nonresident authors whose work illuminates important facets of the Nevada experience. The book includes cowboy poetry, travel writing, accounts of nuclear Nevada, narratives about rural life and urban life in Las Vegas and Reno, poetry and fiction from the state’s best contemporary writers, and accounts of the special beauty of wild Nevada’s mountains and deserts. Editor Cheryll Glotfelty provides insightful introductions to each section and author. The book also includes a photo gallery of selected Nevada writers and a generous list of suggested further readings. Nevada has inspired an exceptionally rich panorama of fine writing and a dazzling array of literary voices. The selections in Literary Nevada will engage and delight readers while revealing the complex and exciting diversity of the state’s history, people, and life.

Includes Part 1, Number 1: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals (January - June)

Long before laughter was prescribed for illness, Anne Ellis wrote with unexpected humor of her extended bout with the "villain" asthma. SunshineøPreferred sums up the attitude of a remarkable woman whose illness interrupted a busy life as politician and breadwinner for two children. In the 1920s she is shuffled from home in Colorado to sanitariums in sunny Arizona and New Mexico. Throughout the long ordeal, she showed her zest for life in writing vivid sketches of her doctors, nurses, and fellow patients. Anne Ellis advises the reader: "Don't read this book unless you are a person who never has been ill, or who is now ill, or who is just recovering from illness, or who hopes never to be ill."