'The realist is an optimist'

 

"Therealist . . . is really an optimist, a dreamer. He sees life in terms of whatit might be, as well as in terms of what it is; but he writes of what is, and,at his best, suggests what is to be, by contrast."– Hamlin Garland

Born on a Wisconsin farm onSept. 14 1860 to devotees, Garland was namedHannibal Hamlin after Abraham Lincoln’s vice presidential running mate.    But he never much liked the name Hannibaland went by Hamlin most of his life, particularly after his writing career tookoff.                         Novelist, poet, essayist, shortstory writer, Garland is best known for his fiction involving hard-workingMidwestern farmers – a reflection of his “Growing Up Days” in Wisconsin, Iowaand South Dakota.  His first majorsuccess, in fact, was a book of short stories Main-Travelled Roads,inspired by his days on the farm. He then serialized a biography of Ulysses S.Grant in McClure's Magazine, publishing it as a book in 1898, the sameyear he traveled to the Yukon to witness the Klondike Gold Rush and inspiring hisbest-seller The Trail of the Gold Seekers. 
While he was a prolific writer inmany genres, his work as a memoirist brought him his most acclaim, beginningwith his autobiography A Son of the Middle Border, its PulitzerPrize-winning sequel A Daughter of the Middle Border, and a number ofother memoirs about farm life, the people, and the harsh land they strove totame – “...the hard, unromantic truth," he said, "of pioneer life on the plains.”