Hamlin Garland’s “Modernism”

In 1890, the regionalist writer Hamlin Garland used the word “modernism” to describe his own aesthetic project, apparently becoming the first American writer to claim this label. This paper explores the implications of Garland’s historically early usage for understanding the emergence of American modernism. It argues that a number of aspects of Garland’s writing—his exploration of symbolism, his interest in women’s experience and his celebration of female rebellion, his interest in fragmentary forms, and his focus on the modernity of provincial American life—define points of articulation between regionalism and modernism, American provincialism and an American avant-garde.