Hamlin Garland: A Biography

Jean Holloway

Published by University of Texas Press 1960

Hamlin Garland

A Biography

Jean Holloway

https://doi.org/10.7560/730281

Overview
Contents

About this book

Hamlin Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads is recognized as one of the early landmarks of American literary realism. But Garland’s shift in mid-career from the harsh verisimilitude of Prairie Folks and Prairie Songs to a romanticizing of the Far West, and from ardent espousal of the principles of “veritism” to violent denunciations of naturalism, is a paradox which has long puzzled literary historians.

In tracing the evolution of Garland’s work, the various reactions of his stories under the influence of editorial comment and of contemporary critical reaction, Jean Holloway suggests that the Garland apostasy was an illusion produced by his very intellectual immobility amidst the swirling currents of American thought. His extensive correspondence with Gilder of the Century, Alden of Harper’s Monthly, McClure of McClure’s, and Bok of the Ladies’ Home Journal is adduced in support of the thesis that the writer’s choices of subject and of treatment were psychologically forced rather than conditioned primarily by literary theory.

As a subject for biography, however, Garland has an appeal far beyond the scope of his literary influence. The friendships of this gregarious peripatetic with the famous began with Howells, Twain, Whitman, and Stephen Crane, stretched down the years to include such younger men as Bret Harte and Carl Van Doren, and crossed the seas to embrace such British literary lions as Barrie, Shaw, and Kipling. Garland’s fervent espousal of “causes”—the Single Tax Movement, psychic experimentation, Indian rights-brought him into close contact with other prominent men—Henry George, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Jennings Bryan.

These public figures form the incidental characters in Garland’s spate of autobiographical works. Yet it is the central figure of his own story which has become permanently identified with the “Middle Border,” that region “between the land of the hunter and the harvester” which Augustus Thomas defined as “wherever Hamlin Garland is.” In A Son of the Middle Border Garland nostalgically recreated his boyhood on the frontier and, regardless of the detractions of literary critics, preserved for posterity an important segment of American social history.

Author / Editor information

Jean Holloway (1911–1984) held a PhD in English from the University of Texas. She was the youngest person ever to pass the Texas bar, the first editor of the University of Texas Press, an author, and a lawyer.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Foreword Jean Holloway Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Table of Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
1. The Minister's Charge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Professor of Literature, "or Something Kin" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
3. The Dean Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
4. Main-Travelled Roads and Byways Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
5. Prairie Folks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
6. Prairie Songs and Prairie Pub Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
7. Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
8. Wayside Courtships Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
9. Her Mountain Lover Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
10. "Manly Poetry and a High Ideal" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
11. The Tyranny of the Dark Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
12. The Sunset Edition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
13. A Son of the Middle Border Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
14. A Literary Comeback Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
15. The Hall of Mirrors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	260
16. A Literary Nomad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	335

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Copyright year: 1960
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 362

eBook

Published: December 15, 2014
ISBN: 9781477307151