LEST WE FORGET  SUSAN GLASPELL
(July 1, 1876 - July 27, 1948)

The first lady of American drama, a pioneering feminist writer
and America's first important modern female playwright.

At the time of her death she was remembered primarily for discovering Eugene O'Neill.   Critical reassessment has led to renewed interest in her career.

She was raised on a rural homestead just below the bluffs of the Mississippi River along the western edge of Davenport, Iowa. Having a fairly conservative upbringing, "Susie" was remembered as a "precocious child" who would often rescue stray animals.

With the family farm compromised by suburban development, her worldview was shaped by the pioneer tales of her grandmother, who told of regular visits by Indians to the farm in the years before Iowa statehood.  Growing up directly across the river from Black Hawk's ancestral village, she was influenced by the Sauk leader's autobiography who wrote that Americans should be worthy inheritors of the land.  During the Panic of 1893, the farm was sold and she moved with her family to the city.

An active student in Davenport's public schools, she took an advanced course of study and gave the commencement speech at her 1894 graduation. By age 18 she was earning a regular salary as a journalist for a local newspaper and by 20 she wrote a 'Society' column which lampooned Davenport's upper class.  She enrolled at Drake University against the prevailing local belief that college made women unfit for marriage. A philosophy major, she excelled in male-dominated debate competitions, winning the right to represent Drake at the state debate tournament her senior year.   Upon graduation she began working full-time for the paper as a reporter, a rare position for a woman.   A few years later she focused on writing fiction with stories published in the most widely read periodicals. A large cash prize from a short story magazine financed her transition to Chicago. Between 1909 and 1915 she published three novels.

HER MARRIAGE
      In Davenport she associated with other local writers to form the Davenport group.
George Cram Cook was a member, a classics professor and a farmer. Glaspell fell in love with him and they married in 1913.  They moved to Greenwich Village where they associated with many of the era's most well-known social reformers and activists including Upton Sinclair, Emma Goldman, and
John Reed. She became a leading member of Heterodoxy, an early feminist debating group composed of the premier women's rights crusaders.     Eventually, she and Cook started a nonprofit theatre company in a refurbished fishing wharf across the road from their rented cottage in Provincetown, Cape Cod. The Provincetown Players would be devoted to creating artistic plays which reflected contemporary American issues, in rejection of the more escapist melodramas produced on Broadway.

Her first play, Trifles (1916) was based on the murder trial she covered as a young reporter in Des Moines prior to her resignation.  It has since become one of the most anthologized works in American theatre history. In 1921, she completed Inheritors which followed three generations of a pioneer family, and the same year she finished The Verge, one of the earliest American works of expressionist art.   Though untrained, she would receive further acclaim as an actress.  Legendary French theatre director and critic Jacques Copeau was moved to tears by a Glaspell performance, calling her a "truly great actress."

After her husband's death in 1924, she wrote three best-selling novels, which she considered personal favorites. She also wrote Alison's House (1931) for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.      In 1936 she moved to Chicago after being appointed Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.

She was reluctant to seek publicity and downplayed her accomplishments and her work was seriously neglected for many years.  Internationally she received some attention by scholars who were primarily interested in her more experimental work from the Provincetown years.

In the late 1970s feminist critics began to reevaluate her career and interest in her work has grown ever since.  After a century of being out of print, a large portion of her work has seen republication.  With major achievements in drama, novels, and short fiction, she is often cited as a
"prime example" of an overlooked female writer deserving canonization.

In 2003 the International Susan Glaspell Society was founded, with the aim of promoting "the recognition of Susan Glaspell as a major American dramatist and fiction writer."

Resources:  Wikipedia,  Ben-Zvi, Linda (2005)  Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times. Oxford University Press. Gainor, J. Ellen (2001) Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture, and Politics, 1915-1948, University of Michigan Press.
Ozieblo, Barbara (2000) Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. University of North Carolina Press.
Makowski, Veronica A (1993) Susan Glaspell's Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation of her Work. Oxford University Press.
Glaspell, Susan.  The Road to the Temple (1926) a biography of George Cram Cook