Hamlin Garland: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Lion

FAIN: FB-50087-04

Keith Newlin
University of North Carolina, Wilmington (Wilmington, NC 28403-3201)

I seek funding to support a new biography of Hamlin Garland that will explore his contributions to American literary culture as well as to literature. Garland's life is a story of ironic contradictions: the radical whose early achievement thrust him to the forefront of literary innovation but whose evolutionary aesthetic principles could not themselves adapt to changing conditions; the self-styled "veritist" whose credo demanded that every "individual impression [be] corrected by reference to fact," yet he spent a lifetime seeking to verify the existence of spirits. Obsessed his whole life with attaining fame, renown, respect, and the admiration of others, he lost it all in his final years. Garland emerges as an extraordinarily ambitious man who through sheer determination and strength of will skyrocketed into international fame before he was 40. My biography combines the story of Garland's life with the story of an emerging professional literary culture. Garland's significance for readers today in part lies in his efforts to establish that culture even as he was mounting a rearguard action to inhibit the ascendancy of modernism.

Associated Products

Hamlin Garland, A Life (Book)
Title: Hamlin Garland, A Life
Author: Keith Newlin
Abstract: In recognition of his achievements in literature, Hamlin Garland (1860–1940) received four honorary doctorates and a Pulitzer Prize. Keith Newlin traces the rise of this prairie farm boy with a half-formed ambition to write who then skyrocketed into international prominence before he was forty. His life is a story of ironic contradictions: the radical whose early achievement thrust him to the forefront of literary innovation but whose evolutionary aesthetic principles could not themselves adapt to changing conditions; the self-styled “veritist” whose credo demanded that he verify every fact but whose credulity led him to spend a lifetime seeking to verify the existence of spirits. His need for recognition caused him to cultivate rewarding friendships with the leaders of literary culture, yet even when he attained that recognition, it was never enough, and his self-doubt caused him fits of black despair. The first and only other biography of Hamlin Garland was published more than forty years ago; since then, letters, manuscripts, and family memoirs have surfaced to provide, along with changing literary scholarship, a more evaluative and critical interpretation of Garland’s life and times. Hamlin Garland: A Life is an exploration of Garland’s contributions to American literary culture and places his work within the artistic context of its time.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Hamlin-Garland,673315.aspx
Primary URL Description: publisher's catalog
Secondary URL: http://people.uncw.edu/newlink/Garland_Bio_info.htm
Secondary URL Description: author's web
Access Model: book sale
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0-8032-334

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