Susan Glaspell – författare

A singular collection of short stories unveiling aspects of the human condition

A cofounder of the Provincetown Players - the group that acted as midwife to the American theatre - Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) can also lay claim to be a major figure in her own right. Her early plays were in many respects as challenging and original as those with which O'Neill made his debut. Her concern with language as subject, with character as an expression of social role, with plot as a mechanism that may ensnare rather than locate the self, mode her very much a modern. In Trifles (1916) she developed a feminist critique of social role. In The Outside (1917) she staged a debate between the life force and a perverse celebration of death. In both plays silence becomes an eloquent expression of meaning. The Verge (1921) is an experimental work of considerable proportions, more daring in many ways than anything attempted by O'Neill. Though Inheritors (1921) is far more conventional it touched a contemporary nerve, questioning the nature and reality of American pieties. Long known only for a single play, Susan Glaspell now emerges as a significant figure in the history of American drama, a woman of genuine creative daring.

Eugene O' Neill is one of America's most celebrated playwrights, but relatively few Americans know the name of the man who essentially gave O' Neill his first chance at greatness: George Cram "Jig" Cook, one of America's most colorful and original thinkers and the founder of the Provincetown Players, the first company to stage O'Neill. Cook's story, with all its hopes, dreams, and disappointments, is told in The Road to the Temple.First published in 1927 in the United States and reprinted in 1941, this biography is the work of Cook's third wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Glaspell, It traces Cook's lifelong search for self, a search that took him from his birthplace in Davenport, Iowa, to New York to Delphi; from university teaching and truck farming, to the Provincetown Players, to the antiquity of Greece. Part of Jig's story is told by excerpts from his journals, pictures, poetry, and fiction. Interwoven with narrative flashbacks, these entries concerning his day-to-day activities as well as his thoughts and feelings bring him to life for the reader. In addition, Glaspell offers finely crafted portraits of the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century; a vivid picture of Greenwich Village between 1910 and 1920; and a moving and lyrical account of the life she and Jig lived in Greece, where Jig died on January 11, 1924. A compelling combination of biography and autobiography, this volume presents a unique and personal picture of a fascinating American original."

The first complete collection of the works of American playwright Susan Glaspell, this book includes all of the Pulitzer Prize winner's works: Suppressed Desires, Trifles, The People, The Outside, Woman's Honor, Close the Book, Tickless Time, and Free Laughter (these eight are all one acts) and the full length plays Bernice, Inheritors, The Verge, Alison's House, The Comic Artist, Chains of Dew, and Springs Eternal, the last two of which are published here for the first time. Each play includes an introductory essay along with extended biographical and critical essays. Two appendices give details on both the first runs and select recent productions of the plays.

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.