Hamlin Garland Summary

Hannibal Hamlin Garland (1860-1940), American author, augmented local-color writing by the new naturalistic techniques that combined realism with a sense of the individual's overwhelming struggle agai... Read more

In spite of his long and productive career Hamlin Garland is a neglected literary figure. With the exception of his early collection of short stories, Main-Travelled Roads (1891), and his autobiograph... Read more

Hamlin Garland is now known almost solely for his short middle-border fiction written before 1895, particularly for his provocative and innovative collection of short stories, Main-Travelled Roads: Si... Read more

A prominent figure in nineteenth-century American literature, Howells was one of the leading advocates and practitioners of literary realism in the United States. He offered early encouragement for Ga... Read more

Bledsoe is an American author, editor, and educator. In this excerpt, he comments on Garland's genesis as a fiction writer and his ultimate deterioration, but the critic upholds the artistic ac... Read more

Pizer is an American critic and educator and a prominent authority on Garland's life and works, having served as editor for the author's Diaries (1968) and the novel Rose of Dutcher�... Read more

In the following excerpt, Saum reviews the various reform movements that Garland promoted in his short stories and asserts that, despite his consideration of society's ills in his early works, ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Krauth examines Garland's depiction of the elderly in Main-Travelled Roads and Prairie Folks, maintaining that the author gave "serious, extended, and successfu... Read more

Matthews was an influential American critic and educator of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In the following excerpt, he praises the insight and originality of Main-Travelled Roads,... Read more

In the following review of The Book of the American Indian, Phillip praises Garland's stories about Native Americans as a valuable addition to the literature of the United States. [The Book of ... Read more

Hicks was an American literary critic whose famous study The Great Tradition: An Interpretation of American Literature Since the Civil War (1933) established him as the foremost advocate of Marxist cr... Read more

In this excerpt, Knight details the events that inspired Garland's fiction and analyzes the stories in Main-Travelled Roads, Prairie Folks, and Wayside Courtships. [William Dean] Howells had no... Read more