A Daughter of the Middle Border

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Macmillan, 1921 - Fiction - 405 pages
This sequel to Garland's acclaimed autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border, continues his story as he sets out for Chicago and settles into a Bohemian encampment of artists and writers. There he meets Zulime Taft, an artist who captures his heart and eventually becomes his wife. The intensity of this romance is rivaled only by Garland's struggle between America's coastal elite and his heartland roots. A Daughter of the Middle Border won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, forever securing his place in the literary canon.
 

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Page 31 - All my emotional relationships with the "High Country" were pleasant, my sense of responsibility was less keen, hence the notes of resentment, of opposition to unjust social conditions which had made my other books an offense to many readers were almost entirely absent in my studies of the mountaineers.
Page 256 - Garland interviewed the participants on both sides shortly after the events, much as he had done with the incident that became the basis of The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop. Later Garland wrote of its composition: With a mere love-story I had never been content. For me a sociological background was necessary in order to make fiction worth while, and I was minded to base my next novel on a study of the "war...
Page 28 - Coolly, published during this year, was attacked quite as savagely as Main Traveled Roads had been, and this criticism saddened and depressed me. With a foolish notion that the Middle West should take a moderate degree of pride in me, I resented this condemnation. "Am I not making in my small way the same sort of historical record of the west that Whittier and Holmes secured for New England?" I asked my friends. "Am I not worthy of an occasional friendly word, a message of encouragement?
Page 258 - ... inspired me, filled me with desire to embody them in some form of prose, of verse. . . . Making no attempt to depict the West as some one else had seen it, or might thereafter see it, I wrote of it precisely as it appeared to me, verifying every experience. . . . To attempt to recover the spirit of my youth would not only have been a failure but a bore— even to those who were urging me to the task. It was my business to keep moving— to accompany my characters as they migrated into the happier,...
Page 393 - ... better reason be called a romanticist. Like lads romantic, he paused, tired to the bone from plowing, to read of dukes and duchesses and of people with charmed lives. . . . Although he pictures his boyhood as hard, still the book probably considered his masterpiece, A Son of the Middle Border...
Page 319 - Oh ! my poor Nelly Gray, they have taken you away, And I'll never see my darling any more...
Page 87 - ... a memory, and that Western society, which had long been dominated by the stately figures of the minister and the judge, was on its way to adopt the manners and customs of the openly derided but secretly admired "four hundred." To abandon western dress was to part company with Walt Whitman, Joaquin Miller, John Burroughs, and other illustrious non-conformists to whom long beards, easy collars, and short coats were natural and becoming. To take the other was to follow Lowell and Stedman and Howells....
Page 253 - Only in dreams he sees the bloom On far hills where the red deer run, Only in memory guides the light canoe Or stalks the bear with dog and polished gun. In him behold the story of the West, The chronicle of rifleman behind the plow, Typing the life of those who knew No barrier but the sunset in their quest. On his bent head and grizzled hauls set the crown of those who shew New cunning to the wolf, new courage to the bear.
Page 211 - You have made a good start in Main Traveled Roads, and Rose of Dutcher's Cooly, but you should do more with it. It is a noble background." Gilder, on the other hand, advised him to develop his romantic writings. "Gilder, who met me on the street soon after our arrival in New York, spoke to me in praise of Her Mountain Lover." 'I predict a great success for it. It has beauty ' here he smiled. 'I am always preaching "beauty" to you, but you need it! You should remember that the writing which is beautiful...
Page 94 - What will they say of you in Wisconsin, when they hear of your appearance in the livery of the oppressor?" A literary dinner provided a subdued and formal setting: Sitting there in the face of hundreds of English authors I achieved a peaceful satisfaction with my outfit. A sense of being entirely inconspicuous, a realization that I was committed to convention, produced in me an air of perfect ease. By conforming I had become as much a part of the scene as Sir Walter or tlie waiter who shifted my...

About the author (1921)

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 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.

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