Kevin McMullen – författare

Recovering a lost feminist story of scandal and strength for a new generationOut of print in the United States since its original publication in 1915, Susan Glaspell's largely forgotten novel Fidelity tells the story of Ruth Holland, a young woman who returns to her small Midwestern hometown after eleven years' absence. Forced home by the death of her father, Ruth must face a family and community that have largely turned against her following her affair with a married man.Glaspell, mostly known as a playwright and for her founding of the Provincetown Players, was also an accomplished novelist. Inspired by events in Glaspell's own life, Fidelity portrays Ruth's struggle to find fulfillment, love, and purpose in a society that imposes rigid expectations and limitations on how a woman should live. Ruth is a woman torn between love and commitment to her family—and between love and commitment to herself. Glaspell's narrative shifts between characters, offering glimpses through the community's eyes of the ways that Ruth's return forces residents to confront their beliefs and the impact that they have. In the vein of Chopin's The Awakening and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Glaspell's Fidelity holds an important place in the history of early twentieth-century feminist literature and is long overdue to be back in print.Students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, under the guidance of Kevin McMullen, project manager of the Walt Whitman Archive, have resurrected this neglected novel. The text includes contemporary photographs of Susan Glaspell, a new introduction, and annotations throughout, which provide useful commentary for students and general readers alike.

Unearthing the overlooked poet behind Poetry magazineHarriet Monroe, whose work as the visionary founding editor of Poetry magazine profoundly shaped the development of American poetry in the 20th century, was a vital and prolific poet in her own right. This volume showcases the sweeping breadth of Monroe's poetic talents.Monroe lived through a period of immense change and global conflict, from the American Civil War, through World War I and the Great Depression, up to the first stirrings of the second Great War. Through her poetry, Monroe confronted major issues, critiquing war, the impact of industrialization on the arts, and inequality, while championing women's rights and environmental conservation—issues that remain pressingly relevant today. Monroe's three collections of poetry, as well as her own "selected poems" volume, have all long been out of print. This book, then, represents the first appearance of many of these poems in more than 100 years. This selection includes meditations on modern technology and globalization in the early 20th century, love lyrics, hymns to the deserts of the American West, feminist reflections on gender and motherhood, and more. The volume also includes a number of poems that have never before been published, drawing on manuscripts found in Monroe's papers at the University of Chicago Library.Students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, under the guidance of Kevin McMullen, project manager of the Walt Whitman Archive, selected these poems to capture the range and breadth of Monroe's styles and poetic interest. The poems, along with an extensive critical introduction and explanatory notes, establish Monroe's place as an important and overlooked Modernist poet from the Midwest.