Boy Life on the Prairie was first published in 1899, some eighteen years before the appearance of Hamlin Garland's A Son of the Middle Border . The broad scope of the latter book, as B. R. McElderry, Jr., tells us in the introduction to this new edition of Boy Life , has overshadowed the "earlier and better book of reminiscence dealing specifically with Garland's boyhood experiences on an Iowa farm from 1869 to about 1881. When he wrote Boy Life on...