(1860-)
[Illustration: HAMLIN GARLAND]
Hamlin Garland is a favorable example of a class of young writers
which is coming to the fore in the Middle West of the United
States,--fresh, original, full of faith and energy, with a robust and
somewhat aggressive Americanism. In native endowment he is a strong
man, and his personal character is manly, clean, and high. At times,
carelessness of technique and lack of taste can be detected in his
writings, but his strength and spirit make amends for these defects.
Mr. Garland was born September 16th, 1860, in the La Crosse Valley,
Wisconsin. His family is of Scotch descent,--sturdy farmer folk,
remarkable for their physical powers. His maternal grandfather was an
Adventist, with the touch of mysticism that word implies. Garland was
reared in the picturesque coule country (French _coulee_, a dry
gulch); living in various Western towns, one of them being the Quaker
community of Hesper, Iowa. His early education was received from the
local schools; the unconscious assimilation of the Western ways came
while he rode horses, herded cattle, and led the wholesome, simple
open-air life of the middle-class people. Some years were spent in a
small seminary at Osage, Wisconsin, whence he was graduated at
twenty-one years of age. His kin moved to Dakota, but Hamlin faced
Eastward, eager to see the world. Two years of travel and teaching in
Illinois found him in 1883 "holding down" a Dakota claim--the only
result of the land boom being a rich field of literary ore. Then in
1884 he went to Boston, made his headquarters at the Public Library,
read diligently, taught literature and elocution in the School of
Oratory, and became one of the literary workers there, remaining until
1891. Since then he has lectured much throughout the country, and has
settled in Chicago, his summer home being at West Salem, Wisconsin, in
the beautiful coule region of his boyhood.
Mr. Garland's main work is in fiction, but he has also tried his hand
at verse and the essay. His volume 'Crumbling Idols,' published in
1894, a series of audacious papers in which the doctrine of realism is
cried up and the appeal to past literary canons made a mock of,
called out critical abuse and ridicule, and no doubt shows a lack of
perspective. Yet the book is racy and stimulating in the extreme. The
volume of poetry, 'Prairie Songs' (1893), has the merit of dealing
picturesquely and at first hand with Western scenery and life, and
contains many a stroke of imaginative beauty. Of the half-dozen books
of tales and longer stories, 'Main-Traveled Roads,' Mr. Garland's
first collection of short stories, including work as striking as
anything he has done, gives vivid pastoral pictures of the Mississippi
Valley life. 'A Little Norsk' (1893), along with its realism in
sketching frontier scenes, possesses a fine romantic flavor. And 'Rose
of Dutcher's Coolly' (1895), decidedly his strongest full-length
fiction, is a delineation of Wisconsin rustic and urban life,
including a study of Chicago, daringly unconventional, but strong,
earnest, evidently drawn from the author's deepest experiences and
convictions. Other books of fiction are 'Jason Edwards,' 'A Member of
the Third House,' 'A Spoil of Office,' and 'Prairie Folks.'
Mr. Garland's work in its increasing command of art, its understanding
of and sincere sympathy with the life of the great toiling population
of the Middle West, and its unmistakable qualities of independence,
vigor, and ideality, is worthy of warm praise. A rich, large nature is
felt beneath his fiction. His literary creed is "truth for truth's
sake," and his conception of his art is broad enough to include love
of country and belief in his fellow-man.