
Garland in His Own Time
A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews and Memoirs by Family, Friends and Associates
Keith Newlin(Editor)
University of Iowa Press
Published on 15. March 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
292 pages
978-1-60938-162-2 (ISBN)
Description
In his heyday, Hamlin Garland had a considerable reputation as a radical writer whose realistic stories and polemical essays agitating for a literature that accurately represented American life riled the nation's press. Born in poverty and raised on a series of frontier farms, Garland fled the rural Midwest in 1881 at age twenty-one. When his stories combining the radical economic theories of Henry George with realistic depictions of farm life appeared as <em>Main-Travelled Roads</em> in 1891, reviewers praised his method but were disturbed by the bleak subject matter. Four years (and eight books) later, his frank depiction of sexuality in his novel of the New Woman, <em>Rose of Dutcher's Coolly</em> (1895), made Garland even more controversial.
After realising he couldn't make a living from such realistic works, Garland turned first to biography, then to critically panned but commercially popular romances set in the mountain west, and eventually to autobiography. In 1917 he published <em>A Son of the Middle Border</em>, a remarkable autobiography in which he combined the story of his life to 1893 with the story of U.S. westward expansion, to considerable critical acclaim and large sales. Its 1921 sequel, <em>A Daughter of the Middle Border</em>, received the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Although the author eventually wrote no fewer than eight autobiographies, he showed little awareness of the effect of his strong personality upon others. The sixty-six reminiscences in Garland in His Own Time offer an essential complement to his self-portrait by giving the perspectives of family, friends, fellow writers, and critics. The book offers the contemporary reader new reasons to return to this fascinating writer's work.
After realising he couldn't make a living from such realistic works, Garland turned first to biography, then to critically panned but commercially popular romances set in the mountain west, and eventually to autobiography. In 1917 he published <em>A Son of the Middle Border</em>, a remarkable autobiography in which he combined the story of his life to 1893 with the story of U.S. westward expansion, to considerable critical acclaim and large sales. Its 1921 sequel, <em>A Daughter of the Middle Border</em>, received the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Although the author eventually wrote no fewer than eight autobiographies, he showed little awareness of the effect of his strong personality upon others. The sixty-six reminiscences in Garland in His Own Time offer an essential complement to his self-portrait by giving the perspectives of family, friends, fellow writers, and critics. The book offers the contemporary reader new reasons to return to this fascinating writer's work.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Iowa
United States
Illustrations
12 illustrations
Weight
456 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-60938-162-2 (9781609381622)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
<strong>Keith Newlin</strong> is professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, USA. He is the author of<em> Hamlin Garland, A Life</em>, editor of <em>The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism, A Summer to Be, a Memoir by the Daughter of Hamlin Garland, </em>and two reprints of books by Hamlin Garland, and the coeditor with Joseph B. McCullough of <em>Selected Letters of Hamlin Garland.</em>