‘The Significant Hamlin Garland’ collects the best of Donald Pizer’s essays dealing with Garland’s early work and activities in an effort to re-establish the importance of this formative stage in his career. The essays in the first part of the book are devoted to Garland’s radical economic and artistic beliefs and activities, while those in the second half concentrate on his most permanent work of the period: ‘Main-Travelled Roads’, his novel ‘Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly’, and his autobiography ‘A Son of the Middle Border’.