History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Hamlin Garland
HAMLIN GARLAND, poet and novelist, was born at West Salem, Wisconsin, September 16, 1860. His parents removed to Iowa when he was a child and his early education was acquired in the district schools of Mitchell County. He attended the Cedar Valley Seminary at Osage, where he graduated in 1881. When not in school he worked on the farm and later taught school in Illinois. He took a claim in Dakota, where he remained but a short time, when he went to Boston and began to write stories which at once attracted attention. In 1893 he returned to the west, making his home in Chicago. Mr. Garland is a writer whose articles and stories have appeared in the leading magazines of the country. He has also published a number of strong stories in book form. The first which brought him into general notice, and which, in the opinion of his Iowa friends, he has not surpassed is “Main Traveled Roads,” a vivid picture of the West as he knew it immediately after the war. Mr. Garland has also written a series of tales of Iowa political life, among them the “Spoil of Office.” “Rose of Dutchess Coolie” and the “Captain of the Gray Horse Troop” are his latest stories. Mr. Garland has also written a number of poems which have appeared under the title of “Prairie Songs.”