Hamlin Garland, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of more than forty books, was a central figure in American literary life for half a century. He was intimately involved with many of the major literary, social, and artistic movements in American culture, and his extensive correspondence with the intellectual leaders of American culture was almost unparalleled in scope. This volume brings together a rich, representative sample of Garland?s letters. They are addressed to an impressive roster of individuals: Samuel Clemens, William Dean Howells, Walt Whitman, Zona Gale, Theodore Roosevelt, Van Wyck Brooks, Howard Mumford Jones, Brander Matthews, Stephen Crane, George Washington Cable, and many others. The letters touch on an equally broad range of subjects, from the U.S. government?s reprehensible treatment of Native Americans to environmental issues to the major literary figures and controversies of Garland?s day. Frank, opinionated, and wide-ranging, Garland?s letters provide a valuable and entertaining portrait of American cultural and intellectual life in the years between 1890 and 1940.

Six letters and one card; one circa 1925, the rest undated.

Letter to Harry Goldman acknowledging his letter; letter to Hamlin Garland furnishing autobiographical information.

". . . Newlin's book is a useful companion to the secondary bibliographies by Jackson R. Bryer, 'Hamlin Garland and the Critics' (1973), and Charles L. P. Silet, 'Henry Blake Fuller and Hamlin Garland: A Reference Guide' (CH, June 1977)."CHOICE

Garland's coming-of-age autobiography that established him as a master of American realism.

In recognition of his achievements in literature, Hamlin Garland (1860?1940) received four honorary doctorates and a Pulitzer Prize. Keith Newlin traces the rise of this prairie farm boy with a half-formed ambition to write who then skyrocketed into international prominence before he was forty. His life is a story of ironic contradictions: the radical whose early achievement thrust him to the forefront of literary innovation but whose evolutionary aesthetic principles could not themselves adapt to changing conditions; the self-styled ?veritist? whose credo demanded that he verify every fact but whose credulity led him to spend a lifetime seeking to confirm the existence of spirits. His need for recognition caused him to cultivate rewarding friendships with the leaders of literary culture, yet even when he attained that recognition, it was never enough, and his self-doubt caused him fits of black despair. ø The first and only other biography of Hamlin Garland was published more than forty years ago; since then, letters, manuscripts, and family memoirs have surfaced to provide, along with changing literary scholarship, a more evaluative and critical interpretation of Garland?s life and times. Hamlin Garland: A Life is an exploration of Garland?s contributions to American literary culture and places his work within the artistic context of its time.

ALS, Boston, Mass., to Edwin P. Sampson, Saco, Me., offering assistance and stating that "there is plenty of fiction whose reading will do your scholars good."

This sequel to Garland's acclaimed autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border, continues his story as he sets out for Chicago and settles into a Bohemian encampment of artists and writers. There he meets Zulime Taft, an artist who captures his heart and eventually becomes his wife. The intensity of this romance is rivaled only by Garland's struggle between America's coastal elite and his heartland roots. A Daughter of the Middle Border won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, forever securing his place in the literary canon.