MacLane had always chafed, or felt, "
anxiety of place", at living in Butte, a mining city far from cultural centers, and used the money from her first book's sales to travel to Chicago and then throughout the East Coast. She lived in
Rockland, Massachusetts, wintering in
St. Augustine, Florida, from 1903 to 1908, then in
Greenwich Village from 1908 to 1909, where she continued writing and, by her later published accounts, living a
decadent and
Bohemian existence. She was close friends with the feminist writer
Inez Haynes Irwin, who is referenced in some of MacLane's 1910 writing in a Butte newspaper and who in turn mentioned MacLane in a 1911 magazine article. For a period, she lived with her friend Caroline M. Branson, who had been the long-time companion of
Maria Louise Pool until the latter's death in 1898. They lived in the Rockland house that Pool left to Branson. Mary Maclane also had a multi-decade friendship with
Harriet Monroe. MacLane died in
Chicago in early August 1929, aged 48. She was less frequently discussed through the mid to late 20th century, and her prose remained out of print until late 1993, when
The Story of Mary MacLane and some of her newspaper feature work was republished in
Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology. == Contemporary collections and performances ==