A Son of the Middle Border

by Hamlin Garland

Overview

A classic of American realism, A Son of the Middle Border is the true coming-of-age odyssey of a farm boy who-informed by the full brute force of a homesteaders' life on the vast unbroken prairie-would become a preeminent American writer of the early twentieth century. Pulitzer Prize winner Hamlin Garland recounts in this captivating autobiography his journey from a rural childhood to the study of literature and the sciences in Boston, his vital connections with such inspirations as William Dean Howells, and eventually his reclaimed sense of identity as a writer of the Midwest's beautiful yet hard land. This book definitively placed Garland among such regionalist writers as Willa Gather, Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Dreiser.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781545249673
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	04/13/2017
Pages:	162
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), author of more than 40 books, is best known for his short story collection Main-Travelled Roads. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1918 and won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1922.

Table of Contents

Introduction     vii
Home from the War     3
The McClintocks     13
The Home in the Coulee     23
Father Sells the Farm     35
The Last Threshing in the Coulee     42
David and His Violin     49
Winnesheik "Woods and Prairie Lands"     56
We Move Again     65
Our First Winter on the Prairie     70
The Homestead on the Knoll     81
School Life     87
Chores and Almanacs     94
Boy Life on the Prairie     101
Wheat and the Harvest     116
Harriet Goes Away     129
We Move to Town     138
A Taste of Village Life     150
Back to the Farm     161
End of School Days     174
The Land of the Dakotas     184
The Grasshopper and the Ant     194
We Discover New England     209
Coasting down Mt. Washington     218
Tramping, New York, Washington, and Chicago     224
The Land of the Straddle-Bug     235
On to Boston     248
Enter a Friend     260
A Visit to the West     275
I Join the Anti-PovertyBrigade     292
My Mother Is Stricken     308
Main Travelled Roads     319
The Spirit of Revolt     327
The End of the Sunset Trail     336
We Go to California     342
The Homestead in the Valley     353

Editorial Reviews

In this brace of literary autobiographies (the individual titles were released in 1921 and 1917, respectively), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Garland unfurled his life growing up in Wisconsin farm country and blazing a trail to the Northeast to study in Boston, where he crossed paths with many of the top writers of the day. Daughterresumes the story of his further adventures in the arts. Paris wasn't the only 1920s literary hot spot. Both New York and Boston had thriving artistic communities into which Garland drifted, meeting young artist Zulime Taft, whom he married. A wonderful piece of Americana.

—Michael Rogers

Library Journal