One Man in His Time

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1873 – 1945) was an American novelist who portrayed the changing world of the contemporary south. Glasgow's first novel, The Descendant (1897) was written in secret and published anonymously. The novel features an emancipated heroine who seeks passion rather than marriage. Although it was published anonymously, the novel's 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.” The novel portrays the demise of a marriage and focuses on "the spirituality of female friendship." 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." In 1941 she published In This Our Life, which won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942.