Overview
During her lifetime, playwright and novelist Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was regarded as highly as Eugene O'Neill and Edith Wharton. Winner of the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for drama (for Alison's House), she was cofounder of the Provincetown Players, the little theater that "discovered" O'Neill. Later, Glaspell was instrumental in introducing American drama to English audiences when her play The Verge was produced in London. Yet despite her many accomplishments, Glaspell is often overlooked in the standard histories of American theater. Now, Barbara Ozieblo returns this intriguing and important figure to the spotlight.
Ozieblo combines an engaging narrative of Glaspell's life with insightful analysis of her creative works. Rebelling early against the expectations imposed on women of her era, Glaspell grappled with the conflict between Victorian mores and feminist aspirations throughout her life. In Trifles, now recognized as a groundbreaking feminist drama, she explored the reasons for a woman's extreme response to her husband's demanding, authoritarian stance. Ozieblo also investigates Glaspell's relationship with dramatist George Cram Cook, exploring the scandal that surrounded their courtship and marriage as well as the life they led among the bohemians of Greenwich Village.
Editorials
From the Publisher
In this spirited attempt to resurrect Glaspell's other works, Ozieblo . . . has composed a complex, often frustrating portrait of a forward-thinking feminist who 'insisted that her life and achievements were uninteresting compared with those of her husband.' (New York Times Book Review)This book is a vivid account of America's premiere feminist playwright of the early 20th century. (American Theatre)
An engaging, provocative, and highly readable account. (Choice)
[This] biography charts Glaspell's fascinating progression from a well-mannered but freethinking girl in Davenport, Iowa, to an early feminist novelist, to an expatriate in Greece, then back to America, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1931. (Utne Reader)
[With] exhaustive research and generous use of quotes from interviews and private correspondence, this is an important addition to the literature, presenting as it does a Pulitzer-Prize-winning, highly influential character in the history of American theater who has often been overlooked. (Library Journal)