In mid-April, author Hamlin Garland (1860 – 1940) will be inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. As the current President of the Hamlin Garland Society, I was invited to write an essay about Garland’s contributions to literature focusing on his Chicago years, from the mid 1890s until 1915. The following is a brief excerpt of my tribute to Garland.
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Hamlin Garland’s story is a major challenge for anyone seeking to capture his life and career, in part because his life consists of many distinct phases corresponding to the numerous places he lived… boyhood years in Wisconsin, Iowa, and South Dakota before career years in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. The irony here is an author known primarily for stories set in rural locations working from four of our country’s largest cities.
I have long contended most evaluations of Garland have overlooked the importance of his formative years in North Iowa, including eleven years in Burr Oak Township, Mitchell County, Iowa. This assessment seems to be changing, as more recent evaluations have noted Garland’s Mitchell County years, from age ten to twenty-one (1870 – 1881), which supplied him with material he drew on throughout his long career. This Chicago focus now prompts my reevaluation of the time Garland spent living near Lake Michigan. It’s evident that Garland’s Chicago period was similarly vital to the author.
Garland arrived in Chicago in his early 30s, when he was emerging as an author with considerable talents. Shortly after arriving, Garland met sculptor Lorado Taft. Nurtured by their mutual admiration, this vital friendship would endure for four decades, until 1936, when Taft died. Importantly, in 1899, Garland would marry Lorado Taft’s sister, Zulime.
Writing is generally a lonely profession. Perhaps as an outgrowth of his solitary work, Garland sought camaraderie when he wasn’t placing words on paper. For instance, enjoying Taft’s companionship, he often gravitated to Taft’s studio late afternoons. Before long, others joined them, finding a sense of community among like-minded individuals. Eventually, this informal group took the steps necessary to form various organizations during Garland’s years in Chicago; the author himself was engaged in approximately a dozen such professional / social organizations during his two-plus decades in the city.
Garland was fast at work on a novel during his early Chicago years, one partially set in the city. Most critics regard “Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly,” published in 1895, as Garland’s finest novel, his best work rooted in his Chicago period. Garland draws on his own background for his lead character, both in her early years on a small Wisconsin farm near the Mississippi River and in the life she experienced in Chicago.
In titling his books, Garland frequently employed the word “roads” or “trails” descriptive of his characters’ journeys. Accordingly, it’s appropriate to borrow his term “trail-maker” to encompass the many times the author was either first or very early on what would eventually become a well-travelled thoroughfare. His first book, “Main-Travelled Roads” made Garland an informal spokesperson for 19th century agrarian society. While other writers brought a rural background to their works, Garland was the first author to capture the hardships, the disappointments, and the isolation of farm life.
Garland is also due considerable credit for his pioneering work in one of America’s most distinctive contributions to world literature: the western. His novel, “The Eagle’s Heart,” (1900) featuring a cowboy hero, is as much a quintessential western as Owen Wister’s “The Virginian,” a book more well-known. Garland’s novel, however, preceded Wister’s by two years. Garland was also a trail-maker on behalf of enlightened government policies toward Native Americans and a trail-making supporter of women’s rights.
The road traveled by Hamlin Garland was long and winding. Throughout his Chicago years, the author encountered diverse frontiers and repeatedly set out to blaze new trails. Garland’s pioneering was accomplished first with a plow, then, ultimately, with his pen. For his ability to bring a fresh perspective to American literature, Hamlin Garland is a significant addition to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. These are my colleagues:
Great piece on Hamlin Garland