Glasgow, Ellen

Glasgow, Ellen (glăs`gō), 1873–1945, American novelist, b. Richmond, Va. In revolt against the romantic treatment of Southern life, Glasgow presented in fiction a social history of Virginia since 1850, stressing the changing social order and the emergence of a dominant middle class and rejecting the outworn code of Southern chivalry and masculine superiority. She spent her entire life in Richmond, Va. Her radicalism was apparent in her first novel, The Descendant (1897), and was sustained through her many subsequent books, including Virginia (1913), Life and Gabriella (1916), Barren Ground (1925), The Romantic Comedians (1926), Vein of Iron (1935), and In This Our Life (1941; Pulitzer Prize).

Bibliography

See her collected stories (ed. by R. K. Meeker, 1963); her critical prefaces, collected in A Certain Measure (1943); her autobiography, The Woman Within (1954); letters (ed. by B. Rouse, 1958); biography by M. Thiebaux (1982); studies by L. Auchincloss (1964), E. S. Godbold, Jr. (1972), and L. W. Wagner (1982).

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Glasgow, Ellen (Anderson Gholson)

Ellen Glasgow, miniature by an unknown artist; in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.

(credit: Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society)

(born April 22, 1873, Richmond, Va., U.S.—died Nov. 21, 1945, Richmond) U.S. novelist. She was irregularly schooled and lived the life of a Southern belle. With Virginia (1913), she completed a five-novel series (begun 1900) depicting the state's social history. She was past age 50 when she gained critical notice for Barren Ground (1925). The Sheltered Life (1932) is part of a trilogy of ironic novels of manners. Her realistic depiction of Virginia life helped direct Southern literature away from sentimentality and nostalgia.

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Glasgow, Ellen (Anderson Gholson) (1873–1945) writer, poet; born in Richmond, Va. She was schooled privately, traveled periodically to Europe, and became progressively deaf beginning in 1889. Based in Richmond, she wrote poetry, essays, and short stories, but her reputation rests on her novels that deal with the social fabric of the South, as in Barren Ground (1925) and The Sheltered Life (1932).