The Letters of a Woman Homesteader and Letters on an Elk Hunt

 

From 1909 until 1933, Elinore Pruitt Stewart shared her daily life as a woman homesteader in Wyoming with her friends and the world through her letters. Although her writings describe the common events experienced by many women of her time, her personal window on the world commanded a universal view. Her published works, especially Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1914) and Letters on an Elk Hunt by a Woman Homesteader (1915) as well as her unpublished stories, letters, and journals, reveal historical perspectives on the settling of the West. They also present, with imaginative insight and vulnerability, a wider understanding of the feminine role in the homesteading experience and add to the American literary canon. Stewart's life, an odyssey northward through the plains from White Bean, Indian Territory, to Burntfork, Wyoming, symbolizes the independence, strength and spirit of our pioneer foremothers.

Susanne George Bloomfield