Rose of Dutcher's Coolly

by Hamlin Garland, Keith Newlin (Introduction)

Rose of Dutcher's Coolly tells the story of a country girl of precocious ability who is raised by her widower father on a small Wisconsin farm. She wants to be a poet and eventually attends the university, where her talent is encouraged. A carefully crafted defense of the New Woman, the first generation of women to achieve economic and social indepence, Rose of Dutcher's Coolly deals with issues that are still with us - the nature of femininity, the problem of reconciling career and family, the meaning of "love," and the need for equal opportunity. Above all, it records a nineteenth-century man's vision of a world that still eludes us, one in which men and women are equal partners.

Excerpt:
Rose was an unaccountable child from the start. She learned to speak early, and while she did not use "baby-talk" she had strange words of her own. She called hard money "tow" and a picture "tac," names which had nothing to do with onomatop ia, though it seemed so in some cases. Bread and milk she called "plop."
She began to read of her own accord when four years old, picking out the letters from the advertisements of the newspapers, and running to her mother at the sink or bread-board to learn what each word meant. Her demand for stories grew to be a burden. She was in satiate, nothing but sleep subdued her eager brain.
As she grew older she read and re-read her picture-books when alone, but when older people were talking she listened as attentively as if she understood every word. She had the power of amusing herself and visited very little with other children.

Genres: Fiction

404 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Stories and novels of American writer Hannibal Hamlin Garland include the autobiographical A Son of the Middle Border and depict the hardships that Midwestern farmers endured.

People best know this American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer for his fiction, involving hard-working Midwestern farmers.

Hannibal Hamlin Garland was born on a farm near West Salem, Wisconsin, on September 14, 1860, the second of four children of Richard Garlin of Maine and Charlotte Isabelle McClintock. The boy was named after Hannibal Hamlin, then candidate for vice-president under Abraham Lincoln. He lived on various Midwestern farms throughout his young life, but settled in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1884 to pursue a career in writing. He read diligently in the public library there. His first success came in 1891 with Main-Traveled Roads, a collection of short stories inspired by his days on the farm. He serialized a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in McClure's Magazine before publishing it as a book in 1898. The same year, Garland traveled to the Yukon to witness the Klondike Gold Rush, which inspired The Trail of the Gold Seekers (1899). He lived on a farm between Osage, and St. Ansgar, Iowa for quite some time. Many of his writings are based on this era of his life.

A prolific writer, Garland continued to publish novels, short fiction, and essays. In 1917, he published his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border. The book's success prompted a sequel, A Daughter of the Middle Border, for which Garland won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. After two more volumes, Garland began a second series of memoirs based on his diary. Garland naturally became quite well known during his lifetime and had many friends in literary circles. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1918.

After moving to Hollywood, California, in 1929, he devoted his remaining years to investigating psychic phenomena, an enthusiasm he first undertook in 1891. In his final book, The Mystery of the Buried Crosses (1939), he tried to defend such phenomena and prove the legitimacy of psychic mediums.

A friend, Lee Shippey, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, recalled Garland's regular system of writing:
. . . he got up at half past five, brewed a pot of coffee and made toast on an electric gadget in his study and was at work by six. At nine o'clock he was through with work for the day. Then he breakfasted, read the morning paper and attended to his personal mail. . . . After luncheon he and Mrs. Garland would take a long drive . . . . Sometimes they would drop in on Will Rogers, Will Durant, Robert Benchley or even on me, for their range of friends was very wide. . . . After dinner they would go to a show if an exceptionally good one were in town, otherwise one of their daughters would read aloud.

Garland died at age 79, at his home in Hollywood on March 4, 1940. A memorial service was held three days later near his home in Glendale, California. His ashes were buried in Neshonoc Cemetery in West Salem, Wisconsin on March 14; his poem "The Cry of the Age" was read by Reverend John B. Fritz.

The Hamlin Garland House in West Salem is a historical site.

Reviews

[Humphrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book can be a bit frustrating because, while Garland treats a number of subtle issues well and does do a good job of laying out an individual's conflict between the country and the city, he idealizes the heck out of his main character, Rose. Given that she is, precisely, the main character, this gets rather annoying rather quickly and significantly detracts from the work. However, if one comes at it in the way Garland might've been more interested in seeing it - as a deeply if not causally related set ideas and events pivoting around a conveniently stationary point (Rose) for the sake of understanding their relation - one can still find quite a bit to value here. In particular, the book's exploration of what is "natural" and of the prerequisites for continuity are good.

[Jim Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

For fans of regional writing only! Garland has been justifiably forgotten in American Literary history. He's a poor substitute for Willa Cather; this book shares some similarities to her "Song of Lark." Here the strong, tall and beautiful farm girl decides to go the big city and "make it" as a poet. We are told over and over Rose is a "genius," but nothing she says or does points to that. She ends up marrying a man 10 years older in a dreary, conventional ending. Garland's sex phobia and occasionally beautiful descriptions of farm life are about the only interesting things here.