Hamlin Garland

The Shadow World (Dodo Press) Hamlin Garland

Hamlin Hannibal Garland (1860-1940) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his fiction involving hardworking Midwestern farmers. His first success came in 1891 with Main-Traveled Roads, a collection of short stories inspired by his days on the farm. He serialized a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in McClure's Magazine before publishing it as a book in 1898. The same year, he travelled to the Yukon to witness the Klondike Gold Rush, which inspired The Trail of the Gold Seekers (1899). In 1917, he published his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border. The book's success prompted a sequel, A Daughter of the Middle Border, for which Garland won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. After two more volumes, Garland began a second series of memoirs based on his diary. He devoted his remaining years to investigating psychic phenomena, an enthusiasm he first undertook in 1891. In his final book, The Mystery of the Buried Crosses (1939), he tried to defend such phenomenon and prove the legitimacy of psychic mediums.