
Gentlemen on the Prairie
Victorians in Pioneer Iowa
Curtis Harnack(Author)
University of Iowa Press
Will be published approx. on 15. May 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
262 pages
978-1-58729-967-4 (ISBN)
Description
In the 1880s, the well-connected young Englishman William B. Close and his three brothers, having bought thousands of acres of northwest Iowa prairie, conceived the idea of enticing sons of Britain's upper classes to pursue the life of the landed gentry on these fertile acres. "Yesterday a wilderness, today an empire" their bizarre experiment, which created a colony for people "of the better class" who were not in line to inherit land but whose fathers would set them up in farming, flourished in Le Mars, Iowa (and later in Pipestone, Minnesota), with over five hundred youths having a go at farming. In "Gentlemen on the Prairie," Curtis Harnack tells the remarkable story of this quite unusual chapter in the settling of the Midwest.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Iowa
United States
Illustrations
38 b&w photos, 4 drawings, 2 maps
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-58729-967-4 (9781587299674)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Curtis Harnack grew up on a farm in Plymouth County in northwest Iowa. Professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College from 1960 to 1971, executive director of Yaddo from 1971 to 1987, and president of the School of American Ballet from 1992 to 1997, he currently lives in New York City and still owns part of the family farm. In addition to The Attic: A Memoir, Gentlemen on the Prairie, and We Have All Gone Away, he is the author of, among others, Persian Lions, Persian Lambs; Limits of the Land; Love and Be Silent; and The Work of an Ancient Hand.