Susan Glaspell - Biography

                Susan Glaspell was born in Davenport, Iowa on July 1, 1876.  She graduated from Drake University.  She worked for the Des Moines Daily News as a journalist.  Once her stories began appearing in magazines such as Harper’s and The Ladies’ Home Journal, she gave up the newspaper business.  Glaspell met George Cook, a brilliant stage director, in 1915.  The two of them initiated the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  The Players were an outstanding gathering of actors, directors, and writers.  Much of her writing is strongly feminist.  Most of her writings deal with the roles that women play or are force to play in society and the relationships between men and women.  She has written more than ten plays for the Provincetown Players.  Glaspell married George Cook in 1922.  They moved to New York City and she continued to write, mostly fiction stories and plays.  In 1931, she won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘Alison’s House’ which is a play based loosely on the life and family of Emily Dickinson.  The latter part of her life was spent on Cape Cod writing.  Susan Glaspell is a very interesting late 19^th century woman writer.  She was raised in the local color tradition which totally changed her life and art, after her marriage and moved east.  About the same time American writing moved from regionalism to modernism, Glaspell “came of age.”  She helped found the modern movement in American drama.  She returned to fiction and earlier themes when her experimental period was over.  Her fiction and earlier themes were much more maturely presented.  No one can say for sure if her retreat back to regionalism was because of her husband’s death or because she felt more secure in the older tradition.  In the summer of 1948, Glaspell died in Provincetown.  She left behind a literacy legacy that includes 13 plays, 14 novels, and 50 short stories, article, and essays.  Her drama will ensure her a lasting place in Modern American literature.  Glaspell wrote honestly of women’s struggle to persecution at a time when radical female voices were hardly ever heard and even more hardly ever listen to.                       

          

Works Cited

"Susan Glaspell : Biography." Spartacus Educational - Home Page. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jglaspell.htm>.

McMichael, George, and James S. Leonard. "Susan Glaspell." Anthology of American Literature. 10th ed. Vol. II. Glenview: Pearson Education, 2011. 1316-318. Print.