Main-Travelled Roads - Paperback

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

This classic short story collection offers an unblinking portrait of the American Midwest during a time of intense change.

Originally published in 1891, Main-Travelled Roads includes eleven 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 infused with a hopeful vision of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful. 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.