Glaspell, Susan

Glaspell, Susan (glăs`pĕl), 1876–1948, American author, b. Davenport, Iowa, grad. Drake Univ. She married the playwright George Cram Cook (1913) and with him organized (1915) the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde theater group in Massachusetts. She wrote several plays for the company, including the one-acts Suppressed Desires (written with her husband, 1916) and Trifles (1916). She also served as actress and producer. Her longer plays include The Inheritors (1921) and Alison's House (1930; Pulitzer Prize). In addition she wrote several novels, short stories, and a biography of Cook, The Road to the Temple (1926).

Bibliography

See biography by B. Ozieblo (2001).

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Glaspell, Susan (Keating) (1882–1948) playwright, novelist; born in Davenport, Iowa. Starting as a reporter in Des Moines, Iowa, she became known first as an author of short stories for magazines; her novels were never very successful. One of the founders in 1916 of the Provincetown Players with her husband George Cook Cram, she wrote several one-act plays for the troupe. In 1930 she won a Pulitzer Prize for Alison's House, a play about a spinster poet based in part on the life of Emily Dickinson. She wrote The Comic Artist with her second husband, Norman Matson; after its New York failure in 1933, she retired from the theater.