Boy Life on the PrairieBoy 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 the