Hamlin Garland

Bio

(1860-1940) Writer, poet. Hamlin Garland spent his summers in Onteora Park from 1917 to the 1930s. He was born near West Salem, Wisconsin; lived in Manhattan. He grew up in the middle western farmlands, the region he later wrote about in verse, stories, and autobiography. His tales, collected as “Main-travelled Roads” (1891), “Prairie Folks” (1893), and “Wayside Courtships”(1897), were bitter pictures of the futility of farm lives. Besides realistic novels of the prairies – “A Little Norsk” (1892), and “Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly” (1895), he wrote several propagandist novels, including “Jason Edwards: An Average Man” (1892), urging the single tax doctrine, and “A Spoil of Office” (1892), supporting the Populist party. Garland is perhaps best remembered for his two autobiographical works, “A Son of the Middle Border” (1917) and “A Daughter of the Middle Border” (1921, Pulitzer Prize). He was also the author of essays, a biography of President Grant (1898), and several books on spiritualism.