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[204] X “Hamlin Garland and the University of Southern California” (1960) Garland Greever Garland Greever (1883–1967) was a professor in the English department at the University of Southern California and coauthor of The Century Handbook of Writing (1918) and The Century Vocabulary Builder (1922), among other titles. Los Angeles, August 1960 When I joined the English department of this University, I already knew Hamlin Garland. At that time, he was spending his winters in Los Angeles and his summers in the East. After a few years, he made his permanent residence here. Epsilon Phi, the English honor society, was then bringing one or two noted writers to the campus each year for public lectures. I suggested Mr. Garland for such an occasion, and the arrangement was promptly made. Later, as program chairman for the Faculty Club, I asked him to address one of our noonday meetings. His pleasure in communing with the teachers of youth, and ours in listening to a distinguished author of impressive presence and forceful speech, led to his being invited back at intervals through the years. Also, the staff of the University Library, manifesting early interest, secured him for a number of public lectures, gave teas in his honor, and put on exhibitions of his books and manuscripts. Happily, to this day, his two daughters—Mrs. Isabel Garland Lord and Mrs. Constance Garland Doyle—can still represent him at University gatherings. In his relations with the University, Mr. Garland engaged in a variety of collateral activities. Among them was playing host in his home to both regular and visiting members of our English and history staffs. I drafted him annually for talks to my classes in creative writing and American lit- [205] erature. For the latter, I selected a time when we were considering writers he had known firsthand—Whitman, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Howells, Stephen Crane. As he spoke, the students saw these eminent but somewhat shadowy writers emerge out of books and become living figures. During his accounts of struggle and privations on the Middle Border, his vigorous personality made him appear a later embodiment of the indomitable pioneer. He often asked who among the students showed promise of creative achievement in writing. He asked that such students be brought to his home; he discussed with them the problems of authorship; he exhorted them to revise what they wrote and then revise again and again until they had captured the exact meaning, the precise emotional nuance. Nothing pleased him better than to confer face to face with talented and eager young writers. Aware that his literary papers and correspondence were of importance to scholarship, he broached with me the problem of their ultimate disposal. His first idea was to disperse them rather widely, but I emphasized the value to scholars of having them in one place, and expressed the fervent hope that this place would be the University of Southern California Library. Subsequent conferences were held with other members of the English faculty, especially Dr. John D. Cooke, and with the Library staff. After Mr. Garland’s death, at his express wish, the Garland Papers did come to the Library, where they became the core of our newly formed American Literature Collection and a rich resource for research, both for our own scholars and for Eastern and transatlantic scholars, who have made extended visits to the Library especially to study them. Mr. Garland’s relations to the University were always extremely cordial. It is pleasant to remember that in 1935 we awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. He is therefore to be remembered not only as a benefactor, but as a Trojan. Garland Greever, from Hamlin Garland: Centennial Tributes and a Checklist of the Hamlin Garland Papers in the University of Southern California Library, ed. and comp. Lloyd Arvidson (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Library Bulletin no. 9, 1962), 20–21. Garland Greever ...

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