Hannibal Hamlin Garland (September 14, 1860 - March 4, 1940) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer, Georgist, and parapsychology skeptic/researcher. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers...... 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...

William Dean Howells ( March 1, 1837 - May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters," he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly as well as his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day," and the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria. Early life and family William Dean Howells was born on March 1, 1837, in Martinsville, Ohio (now known as Martins Ferry, Ohio), to William Cooper, and Mary Dean, Howells.He was the second of eight...

Hannibal Hamlin Garland (September 14, 1860 - March 4, 1940) was a Pulitzer prizewinning American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer, Georgist, and parapsychology skeptic/researcher. He is best known 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 Garland of Maine and Charlotte Isabelle McClintock.The boy was named after Hannibal Hamlin, the candidate for vice-president under Abraham Lincoln.He lived on various Midwestern farms throughout...

Frederick James Gould (19 December 1855 - 6 April 1938) was an English teacher, writer, and pioneer secular humanist.He was born in Brighton, the son of William James Gould and his wife Julia, who were evangelicalist Anglicans. He grew up in London, and at the age of seven was sent to study and sing in the choir at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. He then went to school at Chenies, Buckinghamshire, where he became a day and Sunday school teacher. At the age of fifteen, he thought he heard voices in his head exclaiming "How wonderful is the love of God ," following which he studied theology...

I. THE FATHER, by William Dean Howells As soon as we heard the pleasant news-I suppose the news of an engagement ought always to be called pleasant-it was decided that I ought to speak first about it, and speak to the father. We had not been a great while in the neighborhood, and it would look less like a bid for the familiar acquaintance of people living on a larger scale than ourselves, and less of an opening for our own intimacy if they turned out to be not quite so desirable in other ways as they were in the worldly way. For the ladies of the respective families first to offer and receive...

Silas Lapham goes from rags to riches, and his ensuing moral susceptibility is the center of this tale. Silas earns a fortune in the paint business, but lacks social standards, a failure which he attempts to remedy through his daughter's marriage to the scion of the aristocratic Corey family.

-Oh, no; I won't, - Hewson willingly assented; but he perceived a disappointment in St. John's tone and manner, and he suspected him, however unjustly, of having meant to give himself importance with his guests by the rumor of a burglary in the house. He was a man quite capable of that, Hewson believed, and failing it, capable of pretending that he wanted the matter hushed up in the interest of others. In any case he saw that it was not to St. John primarily, or secondarily to St. John's guests, that he could celebrate the fact of his apparition.