Hamlin Garland, Writer

This month's sketch is a resemblance of HAMLIN GARLAND, Author.

Garland wrote the "Border" books, A Son of the Middle Border, A Daughter of the Middle Border,  Trail-Makers of the Middle Border, and Back-Trailers of the Middle Border among others. Born September 14, 1860, in Wisconsin, he passed on March 4, 1940, in Hollywood, California, at the ripe old age of 79. He began his writing career in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1884.

He traveled to the Yukon in 1898 to witness the Klondike Gold Rush and wrote a novel, The Trail of the Gold Seekers in 1899. He lived in Iowa for a while which inspired many of his writings. He wrote about fifty books, including several that had Prairie in the title and  others that had Trail in the title. Garland won a Pulitzer Prize for biography for A Daughter of the Middle Border it says in Wikipedia.com, where this info is coming from and the sketch is from a photo there. While he was in Hollywood he investigated psychic phenomena and wrote in 1936, Forty Years of  Psychic Research and The Mystery of the Buried Crosses in 1939.

I read a couple of the Border books and found them to be interesting and not exactly what I would call traditional western, but they were personal reminiscences of his travels in the midwest and are literary in my world. If time permits, I will certainly read his gold book and Boy Life on the Prairie to see what they are like. He also wrote a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character, which I may find time to read if I can find a copy.