During the Fall of 1999, I had the opportunity to visit of number of archives in Chicago, New York, Wisconsin, and Ohio in preparation for a new biography of Hamlin Garland. While scholars have long availed themselves of the rich resources of the Newberry Library and the New York Public Library, few people, I suspect, are aware of the rich trove of Garland material that awaits them at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
In the Fall of 1995, the Walter Havighurst Department of Special Collections, in King Library, on the campus of Miami University, acquired the papers of Eldon Hill, one of the first scholars to devote critical attention to Garland and a professor at the institution since the late 1930s. The collection is an important one, both because it contains materials not available elsewhere and because the nature of the collection in its breadth and depth makes it a large and significant archive. Indeed, only three other libraries--the University of Southern California, the Henry E. Huntington Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters--contain more letters and manuscripts by Garland.
| Hamlin Garland and Eldon Hill, a Literary Acquaintanceship | Contact Information:
Martin Miller, Head Walter Havighurst Special Collections King Library Miami University Oxford, OH 45056 (513) 529-3324 |