Main-Travelled Roads - Paperback

by Hamlin Garland (Author), Brianne Jaquette (Introduction by)

This masterpiece of naturalism offers an unblinking portrait of the American Midwest during a time of intense change. Part of Belt's Revivals Series and with a new introduction by Brianne Jacquette.

Originally published in 1891, Main-Travelled Roads includes 11 short stories set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or the region of America Hamlin Garland called the "Middle Border." Depicting an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty, Garland's radical, realist stories--written in a mode he called "veritism"--refute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest. Unrelenting, yet strangely hopeful in its view of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful.

An intriguing look at an era of intense change, Main-Travelled Roads was Garland's first major success, a little-known classic of American literature and the Midwest.

Author Biography

Hamlin Garland was an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers. Brianne Jaquette is a teacher and writer originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has a PhD in English from the University of Missouri and is interested in the nineteenth century, regionalism, and literature.