Ellen Glasgow - Works

Works

Glasgow's first novel, The Descendant (1897) was written in secret and published anonymously. She destroyed part of the manuscript after her mother died in 1893. The work was delayed after her brother-in-law and intellectual mentor, George McCormack, died the following year. It was not until absorbing the losses of these two deaths that she returned to her novel, completing it in 1895. The novel features an emancipated heroine who seeks passion rather than marriage. Although it was published anonymously, the novel's 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. The novel portrays the demise of a marriage and focuses on "the spirituality of female friendship." Critics found the story to be "sodden with hopelessness all the way though," but "excellently told." Glasgow stated that her third novel, The Voice of People (1900) was an objective view of the poor-white farmer in politics. 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. 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."

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.

Glasgow's next four novels were written in what she considered her "earlier manner" and were received with 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. Set in New York, the story tells of domestic unhappiness and tangled love affairs. 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.” Glasgow regarded the novel a failure.

The Ancient Law (1908) portrayed white factory workers in the Virginia textile industry, and analyzes the rise of industrial capitalism and its corresponding social ills. Critics found the book to be overly melodramatic. 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, a direction which she continued in Virginia (1913).

In Virginia (1913) the title protagonist is a southern lady whose husband abandons her when he achieves success. The protagonist in Life and Gabriella (1916) is also abandoned by a weak-willed husband, but Gabriella becomes a self-sufficient, single mother who remarries well by the end of the novel. 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 the novel of greatest personal importance, Barren Ground (1925).

In this novel, Glasgow felt 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.

Glasgow produced two more "novels of character", The Sheltered Life (1932) and Vein of Iron (1935), in which she continued to explore female independence.

In 1941 she 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 after her death, details her progression as an author and the influences essential for her becoming an acclaimed Southern woman writer.