Main-Travelled Roads
by Hamlin Garland
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Description
These short stories, originally published in 1891, are set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or what Garland called the "Middle Border." They depict an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty. Garland's radical, realist stories refute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest.Tags
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1689 Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland (read 12 Jan 1982) This supposedly is the only "important" book Garland wrote. It is his first book, published in 1893. It is a book of short stories. Some were not bad. My favorite was "Uncle Ethan Ripley," about a farmer who lets a patent medicine salesman paint a sign on his barn for 25 bottles of the medicine. I found it funny--Garland is seldom funny. Some of the stories are, of course, stark, but not all of them.
Good stories about the midwest area and farming people. Had to read it for English in 10th grade, I think, but worthwhile anyway!
With illustrations by H.T. Carpenter. With an introduction by W.D. Howells. This Elibron Classics book is a reprint of a 1898 edition by Herbert S. Stone & Company, Chicago & New York. (Product Description)
Liked this book when young (before 1974)
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CCE 1000 Good Books List
1,033 works; 12 members
Fiction (Mostly) in Selective Bibliography of American Literature 1775-1900
431 works; 3 members
Author Information
66+ Works 1,060 Members
Hamlin Garland was born and raised on pioneer farms in the upper Midwest, and his earliest and best fiction (most of it collected in Main Travelled Roads, 1891) deals with the unremitting hardship of frontier life---angry, realistic stories about the toil and abuses to which farmers of the time were subjected. As his fiction became more popular show more and romantic, its quality seriously declined, and Garland is remembered today chiefly for a handful of stories, such as "Under the Lion's Paw" and "Rose of Dutcher's Coolly." His only contribution to literary theory is Crumbling Idols (1894), in which he argued for an art that was truthful, humanitarian, and rooted in a specific locale. The first volume of his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border (1917), was followed by the much-admired second volume, A Daughter of the Middle Border (1921), which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He published several other volumes of reminiscence, all of which are once more available with the reprinting of the 45-volume collection of his works. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original publication date
- 1891
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Statistics
- Members
- 314
- Popularity
- 102,689
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.60)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 47
- ASINs
- 22
