_Fiction of Adventure_
There is no questioning the force that Hamlin Garland has been in the
literature of our time. He has told his story of his own life and
literary activities in “A Son of the Middle Border” (1917), a volume
that was at once accepted as one of the foremost of American literary
autobiographies. In no way detracting from the quality of Mr. Garland’s
later work is the ventured opinion that he has never surpassed some
of his earlier stories. His writing career began about 1890, when the
first of the tales of “Main-Traveled Roads” struck a fresh note in
fiction. Between 1895 and 1898 he wrote “Rose of Dutcher’s Cooley,”
and, in 1902, “The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop.” These, with
“Main-Traveled Roads” are still probably his most popular books. In
1900 “The Eagle’s Heart” appeared, and later “Hesper,” “The Tyranny of
the Dark,” “The Long Trail,” “The Shadow World” and “Cavanagh, Forest
Ranger.”
[Illustration: HARRY LEON WILSON’S BUNGALOW IN THE OZARK MOUNTAINS, MO.]
[Illustration: HARRY LEON WILSON]
Writing men of our generation have begun under the magic spell of
Stevenson. To Lloyd Osbourne it was given to serve his apprenticeship
to R. L. S., as Maupassant served his apprenticeship to Flaubert, and,
while yet an apprentice, to be accepted as a collaborator. Together
the stepfather and the stepson worked out “The Wrong Box” (1889), “The
Wrecker” (1892), and “The Ebb Tide” (1894). Then Stevenson passed on
into Shadow Land, and some years later Osbourne began alone with “The
Queen Versus Billy” and “Love the Fiddler.” In the first decade of the
present century the motor-car was still something of a novelty, and as
such almost a virgin field for fiction. It was of its then baffling
problems and incomprehensible moods that Lloyd Osbourne told in “The
Motor-maniacs,” “Three Speeds Forward,” and “Baby Bullet.” Later books
are “Wild Justice,” “The Adventurer,” and “A Person of Some Importance.”
[Illustration: WILL PAYNE]
[Illustration: From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N.Y.