Main-Travelled Roads

Main-Travelled Roads

Main-Travelled Roads (first edition)
Author	Hamlin Garland
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Arena Publishing Company
Publication date	1891
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	260 pages (first edition, hardback)
ISBN

Main-Travelled Roads is a collection of short stories by the American author Hamlin Garland. First published in 1891, the stories are set in what the author refers to as the "Middle Border," the northwestern prairie states of Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. In the book's eleven stories, Garland portrays the hardships of agrarian life, deconstructing the conventional myth of the American prairie while highlighting the economic and social conditions that characterized agricultural communities in the rural Midwest.

Main-Travelled Roads contains eleven semi-autobiographical short stories, including "A Branch Road", "Up the Coolly", "Among the Corn-Rows", "The Return of a Private", "Under the Lion's Paw", "The Creamery Man", "A Day's Pleasure", "Mrs. Ripley's Trip", "Uncle Ethan Ripley", "God's Ravens and A 'Good Fellow's' Wife". The tales inflect human drama into the harsh, spirit-crushing conditions Garland experienced as a boy, vividly portraying the "overwhelming forces in nature and social injustices" that mark rural existence. Garland's book dedication is a story in itself: "To my father and mother, whose half-century pilgrimage on the main travelled road of life has brought them only toil and deprivation, this book of stories is dedicated by a son to whom every day brings a deepening sense of his parents' silent heroism". As foreshadowed by the dedication, Garland's stories paint an unforgiving portrait of Midwestern farm life: unrelenting physical toil, harsh living conditions, widespread poverty and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

In his introduction to Main-Travelled Roads, scholar Joseph B. McCullough recognizes Garland as one of the 19th century's most influential voices concerning the challenges of post Civil War agrarian society, especially the inequities of the tax system and the struggle for women's rights.

Benjamin Orange Flower, editor of the Boston-based progressive journal Arena, encouraged Garland to use his writing to inform the public about social and ethical issues. Garland's aim was to "write against the grain of the conventional depiction of rural life and to express his land policy and feminist ideas". Flower's Arena Publishing Company first published the book in June 1891 as Main-Travelled Roads: Six Mississippi Valley Stories, of which one selection had appeared in Arena, three others had been previously published in Harper's Weekly and two other pieces were new works. Garland added three more stories to the 1899 edition and another two in 1922, bringing the total from six to eleven.