Ellen Glasgow

Early and family life

Born in Richmond, Virginia, on April 22, 1873, to Anne Jane Gholson (1831-1893) and her husband, Francis Thomas Glasgow, the young Glasgow developed differently from other women of her aristocratic class. Due to poor health (later diagnosed as chronic heart disease), Glasgow was educated at home in Richmond, receiving the equivalent of a high school degree, although she read deeply in philosophy, social and political theory, as well as European and British literature.

Her parents married on July 14, 1853, survived the American Civil War, and would have ten children together, of whom Ellen would be the next to youngest. Her mother, Anne Gholson, was inclined to what was then called "nervous invalidism"; which some attributed to her having borne and cared for ten children. Glasgow also dealt with "nervous invalidism" throughout her life. Ellen Glasgow thought her father self-righteous and unfeeling. However, some of her more admirable characters reflect a Scots-Calvinist background like his and a similar "iron vein of Presbyterianism".

Ellen Glasgow spent many summers at her family's Louisa County, Virginia, estate, the historic Jerdone Castle plantation, which her father bought in 1879, and would later use that setting in her writings.

Her paternal great-grandfather, Arthur Glasgow, had emigrated with his brothers in 1776 from Scotland to the then-large and frontier Augusta County, Virginia. Her father, Francis Thomas Glasgow, was raised in what had become Rockbridge County, Virginia, graduated from Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in 1847, and would eventually manage the Tredegar Iron Works. Those had been bought in 1848 by Glasgow's maternal uncle, Joseph Reid Anderson, who had graduated fourth in his class of 49 from West Point in 1836 and would introduce the labor of skilled and enslaved Africans at the ironworks to accompany skilled white workers. Anderson was a major business and political figure in Richmond, who supported the Confederate States of America, joined the Army of Northern Virginia, and attained the rank of general. However, because the Tredegar Ironworks produced munitions crucial to the Confederate cause, General Robert E. Lee asked General Anderson to return and manage the ironworks rather than lead armies in the field.

Her mother was Anne Jane Gholson (1831-1893), born to William Yates Gholson and Martha Anne Jane Taylor at Needham plantation in Cumberland County, Virginia. Her grandparents were Congressman Thomas Gholson, Jr. and Anne Yates, who descended from Rev. William Yates, the College of William & Mary's fifth president (1761–1764). Gholson was descended from William Randolph, a prominent colonist and land owner in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He and his wife, Mary Isham, were sometimes referred to as the "Adam and Eve" of Virginia.

Career

During more than four decades of literary work, Glasgow published 20 novels, a collection of poems, a book of short stories, and a book of literary criticism. Her first novel, The Descendant (1897) was written in secret and published anonymously when she was 24 years old. She destroyed part of the manuscript after her mother died in 1893. Publication was further delayed because her brother-in-law and intellectual mentor, George McCormack, died the following year. Thus Glasgow completed her novel in 1895. It features an emancipated heroine who seeks passion rather than marriage. Although it was published anonymously, her authorship became well known the following year, when her second novel, Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898), announced on its title page, "by Ellen Glasgow, author of The Descendant".

By the time The Descendant was in print, Glasgow had finished Phases of an Inferior Planet. The novel portrays the demise of a marriage and focuses on "the spirituality of female friendship". Critics found the story to be "sodden with hopelessness all the way though", but "excellently told". Glasgow stated that her third novel, The Voice of People (1900) was an objective view of the poor-white farmer in politics. The hero is a young Southerner who, having a genius for politics, rises above the masses and falls in love with a higher class girl. Her next novel, The Battle-Ground (1902), sold over 21,000 copies in the first two weeks after publication. It depicts the South before and during the Civil War and was hailed as "the first and best realistic treatment of the war from the southern point of view."

Much of her work was influenced by the romantic interests and human relationships that Glasgow developed throughout her life. The Deliverance (1904) and her previous novel, The Battle-Ground, were written during her affair with "Gerald B.", her long-time secret lover. They "are the only early books in which Glasgow's heroine and hero are united" by the novels' ends. The Deliverance, published in 1904, was the first Glasgow book to garner popular success. The novel portrays a romance built on the dramatic relationship between the hero and the heroine due to traditional class constraints. The hero is an aristocrat turned into a common laborer after the events of the Civil War, and the heroine lacks the aristocratic lineage but obtains aristocratic qualities such as education and refinement. The genuine affection and reconciliation of the romance of the two were attempts by Glasgow to prove that "traditional class consciousness should be inconsequential to love affairs." The Deliverance criticizes the institution of marriage because Glasgow herself faced social barriers that prevented her from marrying at that time. The Deliverance is notable for offering "a naturalistic treatment of class conflicts" that emerge after Reconstruction, providing realistic views of social changes in Southern literature.

Death and legacy

Glasgow died in her sleep at home on November 21, 1945, and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia. The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia maintains Glasgow's papers. Copies of Glasgow's correspondence may be found in the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings papers at the George A. Smathers Libraries Special Collections at the University of Florida. The Library of Virginia honored Glasgow in 2000 as she became a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History.

By basing her novels on her own life, Glasgow accurately portrayed the changing nature of Southern society. She was the founder of the realism movement in Southern literature that was made up of writers such as William Faulkner, who considered Reconstruction as "the greatest humiliation in Southern history."

Personal life and relationships

Glasgow had several love interests during her life. In The Woman Within (1954), an autobiography written for posthumous publication, Glasgow tells of a long, secret affair with a married man she had met in New York City in 1900, whom she called Gerald B. Ellen believed that he was the "one great love of her life", noting one particular visit with him in Switzerland:A summer morning in the Alps. We were walking together over an emerald path. I remember the moss, the ferny greenness. I remember the Alpine blue of the sky. I remember, on my lips, the flushed air tasting like honey. The way was through a thick wood, in a park, and the path wound on and upward, higher and higher. We walked slowly, scarcely breathing in the brilliant light. On and upward, higher, and still higher. Then, suddenly, the trees parted, the woods thinned and disappeared. Earth and sky met and mingled. We stood, hand in hand, alone in the solitude, alone with the radiant whiteness of the Jungfrau. From the mountain we turned our eyes to each other. We were silent, because it seemed to us that all had been said. But the thought flashed through my mind, and was gone, "Never in all my life can I be happier than I am, now, here at this moment!" Since Gerald B.'s wife would not agree to a divorce, Ellen was unable to marry. In the end, nothing occurred but the short-lived meetings in New York and Switzerland; Glasgow wrote in her autobiography that Gerald B. died in 1905.

Ellen also maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, another notable Richmond writer. She was engaged twice but did not marry. In 1916, Glasgow met Henry W. Anderson, a prominent attorney and Republican Party leader, who collaborated with Glasgow and provided copies of his speeches for her novel The Builders. He eventually became her fiance in 1917. However, the engagement occurred during the First World War, and Anderson, placed in charge of the Red Cross Commission in order to keep Romania on the side of the Allies, left for the country. There he met Queen Marie of Romania, and Anderson became infatuated with her. These developments, paired with a lack of communication between the two, strained the relationship between Glasgow and Anderson, and the planned marriage fell through. Based on her experiences, Glasgow felt her best work was done when love was over. By the end of her life, Glasgow lived with her secretary, Anne V. Bennett, 10 years her junior, at her home at 1 West Main Street in Richmond.