Ellen Glasgow

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Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873-November 21, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist. Born in Richmond, VA, she published her first novel, The Descendant, in 1897, when she was 24 years old. With this novel, Glasgow began a literary career encompassing four and a half decades that comprised 20 novels, a collection of poems, short stories, and a book of literary criticism. Her autobiography, A Woman Within, appeared posthumously in 1954.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography


 Born into an aristocratic Virginia family, the young Glasgow rebelled against the conventional modes of feminine conduct and thought approved by her caste.[2] Due to poor health, she was educated at home at One West Main Street in Richmond where she engaged in energetic readings of philosophy, social and political theory, and European and British literature.[3] She spent her summers recuperating at her family's Bumpass, Virginia estate, the historic Jerdone Castle plantation, a venue that reappears in her writings. Her father was the manager of Tredegar Iron Works, and to Glasgow he appeared self-righteous and unfeeling.[4] Nevertheless, some of her more admirable characters reflect a Scots-Calvinist background like his and a similar "iron vein of Presbyterianism."[5] Her mother, a lady of the Virginia aristocracy, declined to nervous invalidism after bearing ten children,[6] and Glasgow also combated the same "nervous invalidism" throughout her life.

During the rise of American Women's Suffrage in the 1900s, Glasgow marched in the English Suffrage parades in spring 1909 and later spoke at the first suffrage meeting in Virginia.[7] Glasgow, however, felt that the movement came "at the wrong moment" for her and her interest in the cause waned.[8] Glasgow did not at first make women’s roles her major theme, and she was slow to place heroines rather than heroes at the centers of the stories.[9] Her later works, however, have heroines that display many of the attributes of women involved in this movement.


Ellen Glasgow had several love interests during her life. In The Woman Within (1954), an autobiography written for posthumous publication, Glasgow tells of a long, secret affair with a married man she had met in New York, whom she called "Gerald B."[10] Ellen also maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, another notable Richmond writer. She was engaged twice, even collaborating on novels with one fiancé, but did not marry. She felt her best work was done when love was over.[11]

A popular writer, Glasgow was on the best-seller lists five times. In 1942 she received the Pulitzer Prize for her last published novel, In This Our Life, though by this time her powers had declined. Her artistic recognition had reached its height in 1931 when, as the acknowledged doyenne of southern letters, she presided over the Southern Writers Conference at the University of Virginia. For many years the victim of heart disease, she died in her sleep at home in Richmond on 21 November 1945. [12] Glasgow is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.


Time Magazine, in 1923, captured the essence of Glasgow: "She is of the South; but she is not by any manner of means provincial. She was educated, being a delicate child, at home and at private schools. Yet she is by no means a woman secluded from life. She has wide contacts and interests. . . . Here is a really important figure in the history of American letters; for she has preserved for us the quality and the beauty of her real South.' [13]

[edit] Select bibliography

[edit] Novels

[edit] Collections

  • The Shadowy Third, and Other Stories (1923)[14]
  • The Collected Stories of Ellen Glasgow (12 stories (pp. 24-253), with an introduction by the editor (pp. 3-23))[15]

[edit] Autobiography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Inge 883
  2. ^ Inge 883
  3. ^ Heath
  4. ^ Glasgow 12-3
  5. ^ Glasgow 14
  6. ^ Goodman 19
  7. ^ Glasgow 185-6
  8. ^ Glasgow 186
  9. ^ Pannill 686
  10. ^ Glasgow 156
  11. ^ Glasgow 243-4
  12. ^ Inge 884
  13. ^ Time 26 Nov 1923
  14. ^ Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 127. 
  15. ^ Meeker, Richard (1963). The Collected Stories of Ellen Glasgow. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 


[edit] References

Goodman, Susan. Ellen Glasgow: A Biography. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Inge, M. Thomas, and Mary Baldwin College. Ellen Glasgow: Centennial Essays. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976.

Inge, Tonette Bond. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson and William R. Ferris. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Mathews, Pamela R. Ellen Glasgow and a Woman's Traditions, 1994

McDowell, Frederick P. W. Ellen Glasgow and the Ironic Art of Fiction. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960.

Pannill, Linda in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. D. eds

Reuben, Paul P. "/ Chapter 7: Ellen Glasgow." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature-A Research and Reference Guide. Accessed 4 Apr 2009.

Scura, Dorothy M. ed. Ellen Glasgow: The Contemporary Reviews. Knoxville: U of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Time Magazine, 26 November 1923.

Wagner, Linda W. Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention. Austin U of Texas P, 1982.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Glasgow"
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