From My Experience

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956), a Pulitzer Prize–winning author from Mansfield, Ohio, studied agriculture at Cornell University before transferring to Columbia University to study journalism. As a member of the American Field Service covering World War I in Senlis, France, he lived in Europe and Asia for 14 years and wrote often; however, it wasn't until moving back to Ohio that Bromfield's literary career began to thrive. In 1927, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Early Autumn. In 1939, Bromfield purchased Malabar Farm, located near his hometown, which was his inspiration for writing Pleasant Valley, Malabar Farm, Out of the Earth, and From My Experience. The farm became an Ohio state park in 1976 and continues to promote sustainable agriculture and the importance of soil conversation.

"Because Bromfield has seen so many different lands, he is now more a country man than ever. When he turned his first spadeful on his new Ohio farm acres, it marked the return of the native. Bromfield writes his books in pencil, longhand. He has such concentration that he can come in from working in his fields, go to his desk and finish a sentence he started the day before."—The New Yorker "From My Experience . . . is full of stimulating ideas, fascinating for anyone who understands or wishes to understand something of land and people and animals and plants—their relations to economics, science and the vast scheme of life itself. But it . . . catches one's attention in a different way and draws one back to read it, searchingly, again and again. For in it, cleanly and powerfully concentrated, is the story of a man's search for the meaning of living."—Ellen Bromfield Geld