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 against a hostile environment. In the late 1880s, when...

During a productive and varied literary career Hamlin Garland published almost fifty volumes. But his reputation rests principally on his short fiction written before 1895, and particularly on his volume of short stories Main-Travelled Roads (1891) and...

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: Six Mississippi Valley Stories (1891), and for his...

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 achievement of Main-Travelled Roads, maintaining that Garland "produced a handful of minor masterpieces" in his career.

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, Garland was initially optimistic regarding human potential. The critic also proposes that Garland's eventual rejection of fictional protest resulted from a waning of his optimism and the growing opposition to literary realism at the turn of the century.

Henry Nash Smith on the Importance of Garland's Short Fiction: