Writing 'the hard, unromantic truth'

 

"The realist . . . is really an optimist, a dreamer. He sees life in terms of what it might be, as well as in terms of what it is; but he writes of what is and, at his best, suggests what is to be, by contrast." – Hamlin Garland

 

Born on a Wisconsin farm on Sept. 14, 1860, Garland was named Hannibal Hamlin after Abraham Lincoln’s vice presidential running mate (his parents were devotees of the new Republican party), but never much liked the name Hannibal and went by Hamlin most of his life.    

 

Novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer, Garland is best known for his tales about hard-working Midwestern farmers – a reflection of his “growing up days” in Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakota Territory.  His first success was a book of short stories Main-Travelled Roads, inspired by his days on the farm. He then serialized a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in McClure's Magazine, publishing it as a book in 1898.  That same year he traveled to the Yukon to witness the Klondike Gold Rush, inspiring his first bestseller The Trail of the Gold Seekers. 

 

A prolific writer in many genres, it was his work as a memoirist that brought him the most acclaim, beginning with his autobiography A Son of the Middle Border.   He followed that with his Pulitzer Prize-winning sequel A Daughter of the Middle Border, then a number of memoirs about farm life, the people, and the harsh land they strove to tame – cementing both his place in writing credentials and a chronicle of the time and place.

 

“They are,” he said of his tales, “stories of the hard, unromantic truth of pioneer life on the plains.”