Mary Lee Settle died on September 27, 2005, at age 87 in Ivy, Virginia, leaving behind a major body of American historical fiction.
Mary Lee Settle died on September 27, 2005, at the age of 87, at her home in Ivy, Virginia, near Charlottesville. Her death was widely reported and mourned in American literary circles, with obituaries in The New York Times and other major outlets recognizing her as a distinguished and somewhat underappreciated figure in twentieth-century American letters.
By the time of her death, Settle had authored more than a dozen novels and works of nonfiction spanning six decades, most notably The Beulah Quintet, a five-book epic chronicling West Virginia and Appalachian history from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. She had also won the National Book Award for Fiction (1978) for Blood Tie and had founded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1980, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States, created in part out of frustration with the National Book Awards' commercial priorities.
Her passing marked the end of a career devoted to serious, historically grounded fiction at a time when American literature increasingly favored other forms. Settle's legacy endures through her novels, through the PEN/Faulkner Award which continues to honor excellence in American fiction, and through her influence on regional and historical literature, particularly relating to Appalachia and West Virginia. She is remembered as a meticulous researcher, a demanding stylist, and a writer devoted to illuminating how history shapes ordinary lives.