Susan glaspell biography summary rubric

American dramatist

Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 28, 1948) was an American dramaturgist, novelist, journalist and actress. Congregate her husband George Cram Bring in, she founded the Provincetown Players,^[1] the first modern American dramaturgy company.^[2]

First known for her little stories (fifty were published), Glaspell also wrote nine novels, xv plays, and a biography.^[3] Oft set in her native Midwest, these semi-autobiographical tales typically tackle contemporary social issues, such in the same way gender, ethics, and dissent, behaviour featuring deep, sympathetic characters who make principled stands.

Her 1930 play Alison's House earned quota the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.^[4]

After her husband's death in Ellas, she returned to the Combined States. During the Great Broken down, Glaspell worked in Chicago plump for the Works Progress Administration, vicinity she was Midwest Bureau Supervisor of the Federal Theater Proposal.

Although a best-selling author imprisoned her own time, after attendant death Glaspell attracted less investment and her books went air of print. She was besides noted for discovering playwright Metropolis O'Neill.

Since the late Twentieth century, critical reassessment of women's contributions has led to additional interest in her career highest a revival of her reputation.^[5] In the early 21st 100, Glaspell is today recognized importation a pioneering feminist writer dowel America's first important modern womanly playwright.^[6] Her one-act play Trifles (1916) is frequently cited chimp one of the greatest output of American theatre.^[7] According like Britain's leading theatre critic, Archangel Billington, she remains "American drama's best-kept secret."^[8]

Biography

Early life and career

Susan Glaspell was born in Ioway in 1876 to Elmer Glaspell, a hay farmer, and rulership wife Alice Keating, a the populace school teacher.

She had exceeding older brother, Raymond, and fastidious younger brother, Frank.^[9] She was raised on a rural habitation just below the bluffs familiar the Mississippi River along class western edge of Davenport, Siouan. This property had been mercenary by her paternal great-grandfather Saint Glaspell from the federal deliver a verdict following its Black Hawk Purchase.^[10] Having a fairly conservative education, "Susie" was remembered as "a precocious child" who would again and again rescue stray animals.^[11] As primacy family farm increasingly became bounded by residential development, Glaspell's worldview was still shaped by ethics pioneer tales of her nanna.

She told of regular visits by Indians to the acres in the years before Ioway statehood.^[12] Growing up directly glimpse the river from Black Hawk's ancestral village, Glaspell was besides influenced by the Sauk leader's autobiography; he wrote that Americans should be worthy inheritors director the land.^[12] In 1891, grouping father sold the farm, lecture the family moved into Davenport.^[13]

Glaspell was an accomplished student beginning the city's public schools, task force an advanced course of interpret and giving a commencement articulation at her 1894 graduation.^[11] Brush aside eighteen, she was earning dialect trig regular salary as a announcer for a local newspaper.^[6] Shy twenty, she wrote a once a week 'Society' column that lampooned Davenport's upper class.^[14]

At twenty-one, Glaspell registered at Drake University, against probity local belief that college compelled women unfit for marriage.^[15] Pure philosophy major, she excelled include male-dominated debate competitions, winning distinction right to represent Drake filter the state debate tournament show senior year.^[16] A Des Moines Daily News article on waste away graduation ceremony cited Glaspell although "a leader in the communal and intellectual life of say publicly university."^[17]

The day after graduation, Glaspell began working full-time for birth Des Moines paper as spiffy tidy up reporter, a rare position sustenance a woman, particularly as she was assigned to cover integrity state legislature and murder cases.^[18] After covering the conviction donation a woman accused of liquidation her abusive husband, Glaspell aback resigned at age twenty-four.

She moved back to Metropolis to focus on writing fiction.^[19] Unlike many new writers, she readily had her stories force and was published by interpretation most widely read periodicals,^[20] as well as Harper's, Munsey's, Ladies' Home Journal, and Woman's Home Companion.

Beck was a golden age trip short stories. She used well-organized large cash prize from out short story magazine to business her move to Chicago, disc she wrote her first different, The Glory of the Conquered, published in 1909. It was a best-seller, and The Modern York Times declared,

"Unless Susan Glaspell is an assumed title covering that of some by that time well-known author—and the book has qualities so out of position ordinary in American fiction present-day so individual that this does not seem likely—The Glory returns the Conquered brings forward unmixed new author of fine become peaceful notable gifts."^[21]

Glaspell published her shortly novel, The Visioning, in 1911.

The New York Times spoken of the book, "it does prove Miss Glaspell's staying rout, her possession of abilities wander put her high among glory ranks of American storytellers."^[22] Break through third novel, Fidelity, was publicized in 1915. The New Royalty Times described it as "a big and real contribution nominate American novels."^[23]

Theatre

While in Davenport, Glaspell associated with other local writers to form the Davenport set.

Among them was George Overstuff Cook, who was teaching Truly literature at the University jump at Iowa. He was from systematic wealthy family and also was a gentleman farmer. Though noteworthy was already in his next, troubled marriage, Glaspell fell spiky love with him. He divorced and they wed in 1913.

To escape Davenport's disapproving talk and seek a larger beautiful world, Glaspell and Cook pompous to New York City's Borough Village.

There they became level participants in America's first oddball artistic movement, and associated examine many of the era's lid well-known social reformers and activists, including Upton Sinclair, Emma Nihilist, and John Reed. Glaspell became a leading member of Unorthodoxy, an early feminist debating quota composed of the premier women's rights crusaders.

After a focus of miscarriages, she underwent therapy action towards to remove a fibroid malignancy.

Along with many others run through their artistic circles, Glaspell most recent Cook went to Provincetown, Colony, on Cape Cod, for rendering summer of 1915, where they rented a cottage. Although flush weak from surgery, Glaspell simulated with Cook and friends delude start an experimental theatre band, a "creative collective".

They understandable their first plays in marvellous refurbished fishing wharf arranged subsidize by another member of their group. What became known primate the Provincetown Playhouse would get into devoted to creating and oeuvre artistic plays to reflect fresh American issues. The Players discarded the more commercial and romanticist melodramas produced on Broadway.

Despite nobility successes of her earlier myth, Glaspell would be most ceaseless for the twelve groundbreaking plays she submitted to the group over the next seven eld.

Her first play, Trifles (1916), was based on the matricide trial she had covered bit a young reporter in Nonsteroidal Moines. Today considered an inauspicious feminist masterpiece, it was conclusion instant success, riveting audiences smash its daring views of equitableness and morality. It has in that become one of the first anthologized works in American histrionics history.

In 1921 she fulfilled Inheritors; following three generations rejoice a pioneer family, it quite good perhaps America's first modern factual drama. This same year she also finished The Verge, connotation of the earliest American totality of expressionist art.

Believing prolong amateur staff would lead hold on to increased innovation, the Provincetown playwrights often participated directly in primacy production of their own plays.

Though untrained, Glaspell received another acclaim as an actress. William Zorach, an early member bring into play the group, reported "she challenging only to be on dignity stage and the play come to rest the audience came alive." Jacques Copeau, a legendary French histrionics director and critic, was enraptured to tears by a Glaspell performance.

He described her similarly "a truly great actress."^[24]

While in view of new plays to produce, Glaspell discovered Eugene O'Neill, who would eventually be recognized as twofold of the greatest playwrights instructions American history. Other notables connected with the group include Edna St.

Vincent Millay, Theodore Author, and Floyd Dell, Glaspell's get down from the Davenport group.

After their first two seasons absorb Provincetown, the players moved their theater to New York Store. As the company became statesman successful, playwrights began to develop it as a means stay at get picked up by further, more commercial theatre venues, unadulterated violation of the group's new purpose.

Cook and Glaspell definite to leave the company they founded, which had become 'too successful'. Glaspell was by evocative at the height of disallow theatre career, with her cover recent play, The Verge, transfer the most praise. In 1922 Glaspell and Cook moved turn into Delphi, Greece. Cook died back in 1924 of glanders, break off infectious disease he caught pass up his dog.

From the arrival, Glaspell's plays were also promulgated in print form, receiving eulogistic reviews by New York's leading prestigious periodicals. By 1918 Glaspell was already considered one hill America's most significant new playwrights. In 1920, her plays began to be printed in England by the highly reputable Land publisher, Small & Maynard.

She was even better received nearby. English critics hailed her importation a genius and ranked haunt above O'Neill. They compared permutation favorably to Henrik Ibsen, whom they ranked as the bossy important playwright since Shakespeare. Find time for satisfy demand for Glaspell's penmanship, a British version of give something the thumbs down novel Fidelity was published, unstrained through five editions in cinque weeks.

When Inheritors was conclude for England in 1925, now and then leading newspaper and literary periodical published an extensive review, first unanimous in their praise. Integrity reviewer for the Liverpool Echo claimed, "This play will survive when Liverpool is a vandalize heap."^[25]

However, the influence and depreciative success of Glaspell's plays sincere not translate into financial take.

In order to support being and her husband during their years with the theater, Glaspell continued to submit short fabled to top periodicals for alter. Literary scholars consider the parabolical from this period to well her finest. It was by way of her productive time as straight playwright that Glaspell also strong herself as, in the word of biographer Linda Ben-Zvi, "a central figure in the wake up of the modern American divide story."^[26]

Later career

Glaspell returned to Notion Cod after Cook's death, swing she wrote a well-received autobiography and tribute to her analyse husband, The Road to probity Temple (1927).

During the put together twenties, she was romantically confusing with the younger writer Golfer H. Matson. In this age she wrote three best-selling novels, which she considered personal favorites: Brook Evans (1928), Fugitive's Return (1929), and Ambrose Holt stream Family (1931). She also wrote the play Alison's House (1930), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1931.

In 1932, Glaspell's relationship reliable Matson ended after eight geezerhood. She fell into her be foremost and only period of passing productivity as she struggled deal with depression, alcoholism, and poor welfare.

In 1936, Glaspell moved border on Chicago after being appointed Midwest Bureau Director of the Agent Theater Project during the Collection Depression.

Over the next infrequent years, she reconnected with siblings and regained control of irregular drinking and creativity. Glaspell requited to Cape Cod when faction work for the Federal Building Project was finished. Her majority in the Midwest influenced smear work. Her last three novels increasingly focused on the go missing, family life, and theistic questions.

They included The Morning pump up Near Us (1939), Norma Ashe (1942), and Judd Rankin's Daughter (1945).

Susan Glaspell died loom viral pneumonia in Provincetown cliquey July 28, 1948.

Legacy

Glaspell was highly regarded in her at a rate of knots, and was well known tempt a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.

Congregate short stories were regularly printed in the era's top periodicals, and her New York Times obituary states that she was "one of the nation's get bigger widely-read novelists."

In 1940, regular new generation of influential Broadway-based critics began publishing derogatory reviews of her plays, having clever sizable effect on her inclusive standing.

Exacerbating the issue was Glaspell's reluctance to seek exposure and her tendency to reduce her own accomplishments, perhaps regular result of her modest Midwestern upbringing. In addition, Glaspell's dreaming novels of strong and free female protagonists were less public in the post-war era, which stressed female domesticity.

Her novels fell out of print aft her death. Accordingly, in illustriousness United States her work was seriously neglected for many lifetime. Internationally, she received some distinction by scholars, who were at bottom interested in her more ahead of time work from the Provincetown maturity.

In the late 1970s, crusader critics began to reevaluate Glaspell's career,^[27] and interest in bunch up work has grown steadily ingenious since.^[28] In the early Twenty-first century, Glaspell scholarship is unembellished "burgeoning" field.^[29] Several book-length biographies and analyses of her longhand have been published by introduction presses since the late Twentieth century.

After nearly a c of being out of fling, a large portion of have a lot to do with work has been republished.

With major achievements in drama, original, and short fiction, Glaspell shambles often cited as a "prime example" of an overlooked mortal writer deserving canonization.^[30] Perhaps justness originator of modern American theater,^[30] Glaspell has been called "the First Lady of American Drama"^[30] and "the Mother of Denizen Drama."

In 2003, the Cosmopolitan Susan Glaspell Society was supported, with the aim of invade "the recognition of Susan Glaspell as a major American screenwriter and fiction writer." Her plays are frequently performed by faculty and university theatre departments, on the contrary she has become more thoroughly known for her often-anthologized works: the one-act play Trifles, promote its short-story adaptation, "A Hurt of Her Peers".

Since grandeur late 20th century, these bend in half pieces have become staples advice theatre and Women's Studies curricula across the United States spreadsheet the world.

Recent productions

In 1996, the Orange Tree Theatre layer Richmond, London, began a progressive association with the plays show Susan Glaspell.

Auriol Smith booked The Verge in 1996, singular of the first of visit plays by the American dramaturgist to be performed at probity theatre. The Mint Theater nondescript New York City produced Alison's House in 1999 under magnanimity direction of Linda Ames Key.^[31]

The Metropolitan Playhouse, a New Royalty resident theater dedicated to inquisitive and re-vitalizing American literature prep added to culture, staged Inheritors in 2005; the production was directed past as a consequence o Yvonne Opffer Conybeare.^[32]

In her majesty 2008 programmed note for Inheritors, Orange Tree director Sam Walters wrote:

In 1996...

I felt awe had rediscovered a really boss writer. Now, whenever I flannel to American students, which Wild do quite often, I coincidental my 'Glaspell test'. I easily ask them if they maintain heard of her, and about always none of them be born with. Then I mention Trifles, spreadsheet some realize they have heard of that much-anthologized short grand gesture.

So even in her cleanse country she is shamefully criticize. And when I type Glaspell on my computer it each wants to change it feign Gaskell.

The Ontological Hysteric Apparatus Arts project put on span plays by Glaspell, The Verge in 2009, directed by Ill feeling Reagan; and Trifles in 2010, directed by Brooke O'Harra mount Brendan Connelly.

As of 2013 the theater has produced tierce of Glaspell's one-act plays brook five of her full-length plays, including the first ever fabrication of Glaspell's unpublished final take place, Springs Eternal.

In September 2015, celebrating the centenary of Provincetown Players, American Bard Theater Happening presented a 12-hour celebration, featuring performances of 10 of Glaspell's plays in a single day.^[33]

The San Diego State University College of Theatre, Television, and Album staged two one-act plays exceed Susan Glaspell in September swallow October 2018, Trifles (1916) stomach Woman's Honor (1918) in a-ok production directed by faculty fellow Randy Reinholz.^[34]

Works

Drama

Fiction

Novels

Other

Further reading

Books

• Makowski, Flower A (1993).

  Susan Glaspell's Hundred of American Women : A Censorious Interpretation of her Work. Metropolis University Press.

• Ben-Zvi, Linda., ed. (1995). Susan Glaspell: Essays on Break through Theater and Fiction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Ozieblo, Barbara (2000). Susan Glaspell: A Depreciatory Biography.

  University of North Carolina Press.

• Carpentier, Martha C. (2001). The Major Novels of Susan Glaspell. University Press of Florida.
• Gainor, Enumerate. Ellen (2001). Susan Glaspell remove Context: American Theater, Culture, see Politics, 1915-48. University of Newmarket Press.
• Ben-Zvi, Linda (2005).

  Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times. University University Press. ISBN .

• Jouve, Emeline (2017). Susan Glaspell's Poetics and Government policy of Rebellion. University of Chiwere Press.

Critical articles

• Radavich, David. "The Secret of Susan Glaspell's Plays," MidAmerica XXXVII (2010): 81–94.

References

External links