Ellen Glasgow

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942 for her novel In This Our Life. She published 20 novels, as well as short stories, to critical acclaim. A lifelong Virginian, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South in a realistic manner, differing from the idealistic escapism that characterized Southern literature after Reconstruction. 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.