Hannibal Hamlin Garland was an American novelist, poet, essayist, short story author, Georgist, and psychical researcher. He is best known for his fiction about hardworking Midwestern farmers. Hannibal Hamlin Garland was born on a farm near West Salem, Wisconsin, on September 14, 1860, as the second of four children of Richard Garland of Maine and Charlotte Isabelle McClintock. The boy was named after Abraham Lincoln's vice president, Hannibal Hamlin. He grew up on numerous Midwestern farms before relocating to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1884 to pursue a writing career. He read diligently at the Boston Public Library. There he grew infatuated with Henry George's views and the Single Tax Movement. George's beliefs influenced several of his writings, including Main-Travelled Roads (1891), Prairie Folks (1892), and his novel Jason Edwards (1892). Main-Travelled Roads was his first big hit. It was a compilation of short stories inspired by his time on the farm. He serialized a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in McClure's Magazine before turning it into a book in 1898. The same year, Garland visited the Yukon to observe the Klondike Gold Rush, which inspired The Trail of the Gold Seekers (1899).
