Ellen Glasgow

Ellen Glasgow
Portrait of Ellen Glasgow, by Aimé Dupont
Born Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
(1873-04-22)April 22, 1873
Richmond, Virginia
Died November 21, 1945(1945-11-21) (aged 72)
Richmond, Virginia
Occupation Novelist
Signature

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942. A lifelong Virginian who published 20 books including seven novels which sold well (five reaching best-seller lists) as well as gained critical acclaim, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South.[1]

Early and family life

Born in Richmond, Virginia on April 22, 1874 to Anne Jane Gholson (1831-1893), and her husband Francis Thomas Glasgow, the young Glasgow developed differently from other women of her aristocratic class.[2] Due to poor health (later diagnosed as chronic heart disease), Glasgow was educated at home in Richmond, receiving the equivalent of a high school degree, although she read deeply in philosophy, social and political theory, as well as European and British literature.[3]

Her parents married on July 14, 1853, survived the American Civil War, and would have ten children together, of whom Ellen would be the next to youngest. Her mother, Anne Gholson, was inclined to what was then called "nervous invalidism"; which some attributed to her having borne and cared for ten children.[4] Glasgow also dealt with "nervous invalidism" throughout her life. Ellen Glasgow thought her father self-righteous and unfeeling.[5] However, some of her more admirable characters reflect a Scots-Calvinist background like his and a similar "iron vein of Presbyterianism."[6] Her two eldest sisters, Emily (1865-1913) and Anne (b. 1857) were born before the American Civil War; her eldest brothers, Cary (1864-1911) and Arthur (1865-1955) were born during the conflict. Her brother Francis T. Glasgow Jr. (1870-1909) was born two years before Ellen, and her younger sister Rebe Gordon Glasgow Tutwiler (1877–1967) born shortly after Ellen.

The Ellen Glasgow House in Richmond, Virginia, where Ellen Glasgow lived since the age of 13 and did much of her writing. It is a National Historic Landmark.

Ellen Glasgow spent many summers at her family's Louisa County, Virginia estate, the historic Jerdone Castle plantation, which her father bought in 1879, and would later use that setting in her writings.

Her paternal great-grandfather, Arthur Glasgow, had emigrated with his brothers in 1776 from Scotland to the then-large and frontier Augusta County, Virginia. Her father, Francis Thomas Glasgow, was raised in what had become Rockbridge County, Virginia, graduated from Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in 1847, and would eventually manage the Tredegar Iron Works. Those had been bought in 1848 by Glasgow's maternal uncle, Joseph Reid Anderson, who had graduated fourth in his class of 49 from West Point in 1836 and would introduce the use of enslaved labor at the ironworks to accompany skilled white workers. Anderson was a major business and political figure in Richmond, who supported the Confederate States of America, joined the Army of Northern Virginia, and attained the rank of general. However, because the Tredegar Ironworks produced munitions crucial to the Confederate cause, General Robert E. Lee asked General Anderson to return and manage the Tredegar Ironworks rather than lead armies in the field.

Her mother was Anne Jane Gholson (1831-1893), born to William Yates Gholson and Martha Anne Jane Taylor at Needham plantation in Cumberland County, Virginia. Her grandparents were Congressman Thomas Gholson, Jr. and Anne Yates, who descended from Rev. William Yates, the College of William & Mary's fifth president (1761–1764).[7] Gholson was descended from William Randolph, a prominent colonist and land owner in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He and his wife, Mary Isham, were sometimes referred to as the "Adam and Eve" of Virginia.[7]

Career

Portrait of Ellen Glasgow

During more than four decades of literary work, Glasgow published 20 novels, a collection of poems, a book of short stories, and a book of literary criticism. Her first novel, The Descendant (1897) was written in secret and published anonymously when she was 24 years old. She destroyed part of the manuscript after her mother died in 1893. Publication was further delayed because her brother-in-law and intellectual mentor, George McCormack, died the following year. Thus Glasgow completed her novel in 1895.[8] It features an emancipated heroine who seeks passion rather than marriage. Although it was published anonymously, her authorship became well known the following year, when her second novel, Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898), announced on its title page, "by Ellen Glasgow, author of The Descendant."

By the time The Descendant was in print, Glasgow had finished Phases of an Inferior Planet.[9] The novel portrays the demise of a marriage and focuses on "the spirituality of female friendship."[10] Critics found the story to be "sodden with hopelessness all the way though,"[11] but "excellently told."[12] Glasgow stated that her third novel, The Voice of People (1900) was an objective view of the poor-white farmer in politics.[13] The hero is a young Southerner who, having a genius for politics, rises above the masses and falls in love with a higher class girl. Her next novel, The Battle-Ground (1902), sold over 21,000 copies in the first two weeks after publication.[14] It depicts the South before and during the Civil War and was hailed as "the first and best realistic treatment of the war from the southern point of view."[15]

The Deliverance (1904) and her previous novel, The Battle-Ground, were written during her affair with Gerald B. They "are the only early books in which Glasgow's heroine and hero are united" by the novels' ends.[16]

Glasgow's next four novels were written in what she considered her "earlier manner" [17] and received mixed reviews. The Wheel of Life (1906) sold moderately well based on the success of The Descendant. Despite its commercial success, however, reviewers found the book disappointing.[18] Set in New York (the only novel not set in Virginia), the story tells of domestic unhappiness and tangled love affairs.[19] It was unfavorably compared to Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, which was published that same year. Most critics recommended that Glasgow "stick to the South."[20] Glasgow regarded the novel as a failure.[21]

The Ancient Law (1908) portrayed white factory workers in the Virginia textile industry,[22] and analyzes the rise of industrial capitalism and its corresponding social ills.[23] Critics considered the book overly melodramatic.[24] With The Romance of a Plain Man (1909) and The Miller of Old Church (1911) Glasgow began concentrating on gender traditions; she contrasted the conventions of the Southern woman with the feminist viewpoint,[25] a direction which she continued in Virginia (1913).

As the United States women's suffrage movement was developing in the early 1900s, Glasgow marched in the English suffrage parades in the spring of 1909. Later she spoke at the first suffrage meeting in Virginia.[26] Glasgow felt that the movement came "at the wrong moment" for her, and her participation and interest waned.[27] 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 her stories.[28] Some called her Virginia(1913; about a southern lady whose husband abandons her when he achieves success), Life and Gabriella(1916; about a woman abandoned by a weak-willed husband, but who becomes a self-sufficient, single mother who remarries well), and Barren Ground (1925); discussed below, her "women's trilogy." Her later works have heroines who display many of the attributes of women involved in the political movement.

Ellen Glasgow.

Glasgow published two more novels, The Builders (1919) and One Man in His Time (1922), as well as a set of short stories (The Shadowy Third and Other Stories (1923)), before producing her novel of greatest personal importance, Barren Ground (1925). Glasgow felt in this novel she had successfully reversed the traditional seduction plot by producing a heroine completely freed from the southern patriarchal influence. She believed that writing Barren Ground, a "tragedy," also freed her for her comedies of manners The Romantic Comedians (1926), They Stooped to Folly (1929), and The Sheltered Life (1932). These late works are considered the most artful criticism of romantic illusion in her career.[29]

In 1923 a reviewer in Time characterized 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.[30]

Artistic recognition of her work may have climaxed in 1931 when Glasgow presided over the Southern Writers Conference at the University of Virginia.[31]

Glasgow produced two more "novels of character",[32] The Sheltered Life (1932) and Vein of Iron (1935), in which she continued to explore female independence. The latter and Barren Ground of the previous decade remain in print.

In 1941 Glasgow published In This Our Life, which won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942. In addition, it was quickly bought by Warner Brothers and adapted as a movie by the same name, released in 1942.

Her autobiography, The Woman Within, published in 1954, years after her death, details her progression as an author and the influences essential for her becoming an acclaimed Southern woman writer. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was gathering information for her commissioned biography of Ellen Glasgow prior to her death.[33]

Death and legacy

Glasgow died in her sleep at home on November 21, 1945,[34] and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia. The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia maintains Glasgow's papers. Copies of Glasgow's correspondence may be found in the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings papers at the George A. Smathers Libraries Special Collections at the University of Florida. The Library of Virginia honored Glasgow in 2000 as she became a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History.[35]

Personal life and relationships

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 City, whom she called "Gerald B."[36] Ellen also maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, another notable Richmond writer. She was engaged twice but did not marry. One fiancé, the prominent attorney and Republican Party leader Henry W. Anderson, collaborated with Glasgow and provided copies of his speeches for her novel The Builders.[37] Glasgow felt her best work was done when love was over.[38] By the end of her life, Glasgow lived with her secretary, Anne V. Bennett, 10 years her junior, at her home at 1 West Main Street in Richmond.[39]

Select bibliography

Novels

  • The Descendant (1897)
  • Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898)
  • The Voice of the People (1900)
  • The Battle-Ground (1902)
  • The Deliverance (1904)
  • The Wheel of Life (1906)
  • The Ancient Law (1908)[40]
  • The Romance of a Plain Man (1909)
  • The Miller of Old Church (1911)
  • Virginia (1913)
  • Life and Gabriella (1916)
  • The Builders (1919)
  • The Past (1920) [ghost story, part of The Shadowy Third collection]
  • One Man In His Time (novel) (1922)
  • Barren Ground (1925)
  • The Romantic Comedians (1926)
  • They Stooped to Folly (1929)
  • The Sheltered Life (1932)
  • Vein of Iron (1935)
  • In This Our Life (1941) Pulitzer Prize for the Novel 1942 filmed in 1942 as In This Our Life by John Huston.

Collections

Autobiography

  • The Woman Within (published posthumously in 1954)[43]

Non-Fiction

  • A Certain Measure: An Interpretation of Prose Fiction (October 1943)

See also

  • Auchincloss, Louis. Ellen Glasgow. Vol. 33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964.
  • Becker, Allen Wilkins. Ellen Glasgow: Her Novels and Their Place in the Development of Southern Fiction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Master's Thesis, 1956.
  • Cooper, Frederic Taber. Some American Story Tellers. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1911.
  • Donovan, Josephine. After the fall the Demeter-Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow, University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1989.
  • Godbold, Jr., E. Stanley. Ellen Glasgow and the Woman Within, 1972.
  • Goodman, Susan. Ellen Glasgow: A Biography. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
  • Holman, C. Hugh. Three Modes of Modern Southern Fiction: Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe. Vol. 9. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966.
  • 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.
  • Jessup, Josephine Lurie. The Faith of our Feminists. New York: R. R. Smith, 1950.
  • Jones, Anne Goodwyn. Tomorrow Is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936, 1981.
  • MacDonald, Edgar and Tonette Blond Inge. Ellen Glasgow: A Reference Guide (1897–1981), 1986.
  • 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
  • Patterson, Martha H. Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2005.
  • Publishers' Bindings Online. Accessed 17 May 2009
  • Raper, Julius R. From the Sunken Garden: The Fiction of Ellen Glasgow, 1916-1945. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980.
  • Raper, Julius Rowan, and Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow. Without Shelter;the Early Career of Ellen Glasgow. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
  • Reuben, Paul P. "/ Chapter 7: Ellen Glasgow." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature-A Research and Reference Guide. Accessed 4 Apr 2009.
  • Richards, Marion K. Ellen Glasgow's Development as a Novelist. Vol. 24. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.
  • Rouse, Blair. Ellen Glasgow. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1962.
  • Rubin, Louis Decimus. No Place on Earth; Ellen Glasgow, James Branch Cabell, and Richmond-in-Virginia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959.
  • Santas, Joan Foster. Ellen Glasgow's American Dream. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1965.
  • Saunders, Catherine E. Writing the Margins: Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and the Literary Tradition of the Ruined Woman. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.
  • Scura, Dorothy M. ed. Ellen Glasgow: The Contemporary Reviews. Knoxville: U of Tennessee Press, 1992.
  • Thiebaux, Marcelle. Ellen Glasgow. NY: Ungar, 1982.
  • Tutwiler, Carringon C., and University of Virginia Bibliographical Society. Ellen Glasgow's Library. Charlottesville, VA: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1967.
  • Time Magazine, 26 November 1923.
  • Wagner, Linda W. Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention. Austin U of Texas Press, 1982.

References

  1. ↑ Tonette Bond Inge, Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow--1873-1945" in Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, eds., ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN CULTURE (University of North Carolina Press, 1989) available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/glasgowbattle/bio.html
  2. ↑ Inge, 883
  3. ↑ Heath
  4. ↑ Goodman, 19
  5. ↑ Glasgow 12-3
  6. ↑ Glasgow 14
  7. 1 2 Roberts, Gary Boyd (2007). "Descendants of William Randolph and Henry Isham of Virginia". Archived from the original on 2009-01-14. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  8. ↑ Publishers' Online, May 17, 2009
  9. ↑ Glasgow 129
  10. ↑ Matthews 33, 36
  11. ↑ Scura 21
  12. ↑ Scura 31
  13. ↑ Glasgow 181
  14. ↑ Goodman 89
  15. ↑ Raper 150
  16. ↑ Wagner 31
  17. ↑ Raper 237
  18. ↑ Raper 227
  19. ↑ Scura 102
  20. ↑ Raper 228
  21. ↑ Wagner 37
  22. ↑ Raper 231
  23. ↑ Goodman 107
  24. ↑ Scura 129, Wagner 36
  25. ↑ Wagner 38
  26. ↑ Glasgow 185-6
  27. ↑ Glasgow 186
  28. ↑ Pannill 686
  29. ↑ Pannill
  30. ↑ TIME, 26 Nov 1923
  31. ↑ Inge bio
  32. ↑ Wagner 119
  33. ↑ Silverthorne, Elizabeth. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. p. 3.
  34. ↑ Inge 884
  35. ↑ "Virginia Women in History". Lva.virginia.gov. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  36. ↑ Glasgow, 156
  37. ↑ John T. Kneebone et al., eds., Dictionary of Virginia Biography (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 1998- ), 1:136-137.
  38. ↑ Glasgow, 243-244
  39. ↑ 1940 U.S. Federal census for Richmond City.
  40. ↑ "Review: The Ancient Law by Ellen Glasgow". The Athenaeum (4196): 380. March 28, 1908.
  41. ↑ Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 127.
  42. ↑ Meeker, Richard (1963). The Collected Stories of Ellen Glasgow. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
  43. ↑ Yardley, Jonathan (29 November 2003). "'Woman Within': An Unlikely Rebel of the Privileged South". The Washington Post.
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