Hamlin Garland is a poet and novelist, whose stories are set mostly in
the Middle West. He was born in 1860 on a farm near the present site of
West Salem, Wisconsin. In 1869 his family moved out on the prairie of
Mitchell County, Iowa, the scene of his _Boy Life on the Prairie_, and
of many of the stories in _Main-Traveled Roads_. The selection, "A
Camping Trip," given in this volume, is taken from _Boy Life on the
Prairie_.
Mr. Garland's education was different from that of most of his
contemporaries. When about sixteen, he became a pupil at the Cedar
Valley Seminary, Osage, Iowa, though he worked on a farm during six
months of the year. He graduated in 1881 from this school and for a
year tramped through the eastern states. His people having settled in
Brown County, Dakota, he drifted that way in the spring of 1883 and
took up a claim in McPherson County, where he lived for a year on the
unsurveyed land, making studies of the plains country, which were of
great value to him later. _The Moccasin Ranch_ and several of his short
stories resulted from this experience.
In the fall of 1884 he sold his claim and returned to the East, to
Boston, intending to qualify himself for teaching. He soon found a
helpful friend in Professor Moses True Brown, and became a pupil, and a
little later an instructor, in the Boston School of Oratory. During
years from 1885 to 1889 he taught private classes in English and
American literature, and lectured in and about Boston on Browning,
Shakespeare, the drama, etc., writing and studying meanwhile in the
public library. In Boston he made the acquaintance of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, William Dean Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Edwin Booth, and
other leaders in literature and art.
Mr. Garland wrote his stories from first-hand experience with men under
certain typical American conditions. His stories of _Boy Life on the
Prairie_ and of _Main-Traveled Roads_ are grim stories of farm life in
the West. They portray the conditions under which people lived on the
prairies only a generation or two ago. He shows us that men may become
true and strong because of their battle with such conditions. His books
are as truly American as any our country has produced.
As a writer of literature, these books show Mr. Garland to be a
realist, that is, a writer who deals with the facts of real life, but
as you read _Boy Life on the Prairie_, you will see that he is fond of
the ideal, of the fanciful, and of descriptions of simple rural scenes.
The latter quality is very plain, when he writes of the birds and of
the thrill of the open country that comes to the boys on their camping
trip.