Editors’ note: In 1902, Mary MacLane, a nineteen-year-old-girl from Butte, Montana, published a book detailing her fantasies, her outrageous philosophical ideas, and intimations of her own genius. The book was a sensation, selling a hundred thousand copies in its first month, and launching her into a short but fiery life of writing and misadventure. A template for the confessional memoirs that have become ubiquitous, “I Await the Devil’s Coming,” is being published in a new edition by Melville House this week.

Here’s an excerpt: http://nyr.kr/Ykht64

Photograph: Library of Congress.

(Source: newyorker.com)