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Hal Borland (1900–1978)

Author of When the Legends Die

38+ Works 1,961 Members 39 Reviews 4 Favorited

About the Author

Hal Borland (1900-1978) was the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, most of which draw on his understanding of country life and the natural world. He was best-known for his nature essays in The New York Times
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Works by Hal Borland

When the Legends Die (1963) 787 copies
The Dog Who Came to Stay (1961) 128 copies
Country Editor's Boy (1970) 77 copies
High, Wide and Lonesome (1956) 76 copies
Sundial of the seasons (1964) 63 copies
Hill Country Harvest (1967) 56 copies
Hal Borland's Book of Days (1609) 50 copies
This Hill, This Valley (1777) 45 copies
A Countryman's Flowers (1981) 37 copies

Associated Works

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Borland, Hal
Legal name
Borland, Hal Glen
Birthdate
1900-05-14
Date of death
1978-02-22
Gender
male
Nationality
United States of America
Birthplace
Sterling, Nebraska, USA
Place of death
Sharon, Connecticut, USA
Places of residence
Sterling, Nebraska, USA (birth)
Connecticut, USA
Education
University of Colorado
Columbia University
Occupations
novelist
writer
author
journalist
naturalist
Relationships
Borland, Barbara Dodge (wife)
Short biography
Hal Borland was a well-known American author and journalist. In addition to writing several novels and books about the outdoors, he wrote "outdoor editorials" for The New York Times for more than 30 years, from 1941 to 1978. Hal Borland was born on the plains in Sterling, Nebraska. His family moved to Colorado, where he grew up. After attending local schools, he studied at the University of Colorado. He studied journalism and graduated from Columbia University. Borland started writing as a journalist for publications such as The Denver Post, The New York Times, and Audubon Magazine. From 1941-1978, he wrote what he called "outdoor editorials" for the New York Times. In 1945 he and his wife moved to a 100-acre farm in Connecticut, and lived and worked there. She was also a writer. He published several collections of his nature writing, in addition to novels and other non-fiction books.

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Reviews

Free Prime book about a dog who showed up on a property in New England. It is an okay memoir of the life of this dog. Written 1961. The rib-thin, black-and-white rabbit hound turned up at Hal Borland's Connecticut farm one Christmas night in the middle of a nasty winter storm. Pat, as the dog came to be known, and his raffish travelling companion, a young pup, "were even more unwelcome than the weather," but after a few preliminaries both settled in as members of the Borland household. The pup eventually found his permanent home elsewhere, but Pat became Hal Borland's true companion - and a local legend, the terror of woodchucks for miles around. With his keen sensitivity to the natural world, Borland here recounts, with deep affection and wonder, how a man and his dog can form a magical and unforgettable partnership. First published in 1961, THE DOG WHO CAME TO STAY "will appeal to many sportsmen and to all people who have ever been closely attached to a dog." (The New York Times Book Review)… (more)
 
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bentstoker | 4 other reviews | Jan 26, 2024 |
My introduction to literature via Mrs. Garland's ninth grade English class in 1978. Up until then, I'd mostly read books about sports or comics. With this book, I found that there was a big, awesome world out there called literature, and I've been exploring and loving it ever since. Of course, being an assigned reading, I didn't want to read this book, but, Mrs. Garland's daily quizzes and class discussions were great motivators. With each night's reading, I found something happening to me, a kind of magic. I stepped into another life, another world, and forgot about my adolescent craziness for a while.
Over the years, I've often fondly thought of this book as the one that opened up the world of literature to me, though I could remember very little of it, only that I really liked it. I decided to read it again a few years ago to see if I could find a little of that first magic I felt so long ago. Of course, it wasn't the same after so many years and so many books, but I found it to be good writing and a good story, and I will read it again.
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MickeyMole | 16 other reviews | Oct 2, 2023 |
Written in 1959, this author is an amazing storyteller. It is a memoir, a coming of age story, an era in life which transitions between the open wild, wild west frontier to the influx of homesteaders and their marked off property lines of barbed wire fencing.

In 1910, Hal was 10 years old when his father decided he wanted to take up a homestead on 320 acres of government owned grassland, considered wasteland, or "unsalable desert", in northeastern Colorado, 30 miles south of the Platte valley town of Brush in Morgan County, and 15 miles to the closest village of Gary, which just had a Post Office and a small grocer carrying a few basic items. It was land given as a railroad promotion in 1910 to depression-era farmers of 1907 who believed they could farm the land for five years and claim ownership without starving to death. Hal's father accepted the challenge, and after the five years, the land was theirs.

He helped his dad build their first house ever...just a 14 by 20 foot long rectangle, and dig a well for water. Then, they sent for his mother back home in Nebraska to begin their life on the new Colorado frontier...and so the adventure begins.
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MissysBookshelf | 4 other reviews | Aug 27, 2023 |
Published in 1961, this is another snippet of Hal Borland's life of how a stray dog chose to own him. The last book, "High, Wide and Lonesome: Growing Up On the Colorado Frontier", set in 1910 in the wild Colorado frontier portrayed five years of his life from age 10 to 15. In this story, he is now married to Barbara, both freelance writers, looking to live a more carefree life out in the country. They are quite aged, having just purchased a 100 acre farm in the upper part of the Housatonic Valley called Weatogue, in the fartherest upper northwest corner of Connecticut, when two stray male dogs appeared in the middle of the night and also called it home. Pat, part foxhound, is the prominent dog to become a part of their lives. The other was too young and restless, so they eventually ended up giving him away to a family with a young boy who was down because he had just lost his dog.

If you have a dog or dogs that are part of your family, you will completely love and understand just what he is talking about in this book, if not, then you might find it pretty boring. I could relate to just about every subject he touched on while learning Pat's, sometimes insufferable, behavior and dog language (barks). They had a lot of adventures together living in the valley with a river running through it and pasture on one side and mountains on the other. Dogs do have a way of stealing your heart and, eventually, breaking your heart.

I have only owned strayed dogs, and they have all had their very own distinct personalities. We've never owned more than two dogs at a time since we have a tendancy to let them come indoors and live a life with us. That's all we can handle, and they show up just in time. As one dog dies, another dog seems to choose us to own. Love that!
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MissysBookshelf | 4 other reviews | Aug 27, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
38
Also by
2
Members
1,961
Popularity
#13,111
Rating
3.9
Reviews
39
ISBNs
80
Languages
1
Favorited
4

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