![Photo of Susan "Susie" Keating Glaspell](/women_pictures/Glaspell_Susan "Susie" Keating.png)
Susan "Susie" Keating Glaspell
Personal Information
Born: 1876
Died: 1948
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Drake University Ph.B. Philosophy 1899; took 2 graduate classes in Literature at the University of Chicago
""After less than two years of newspaper reporting, I boldly gave up my job and went home to Davenport to give all my time to my own writing. I say boldly, because I had to earn my living." (encyclopedia.com); "The Society had a stirring Statement of Belief and attracted to itself all of us who were out of sorts with what we were supposed to believe. Declining to go to church with my parents in the morning, I would ostentatiously set out for the Monist Society in the afternoon. … Here were people who had never been together before. A few of the more fearless club women, wanting to know all that should be known about education, even though it involved "certain matters of sex"; a number of free thinking Germans … the town atheist … disappointed politicians." (encyclopedia.com); "
— Susan "Susie" Keating Glaspell
Professional Life
Field of Study: Novelist; Playwright; Journalist; Actress
Institution/Corporation: None found
Degrees & Memberships: Member: Heterodoxy; Monist Society
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Achievements: 1915 with her husband George Cram Cook, she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company; discovered playwright Eugene O'Neill; wrote numerous short stories (over 50 were published), nine novels, fifteen plays, and a biography; 1921 she completed "Inheritors" it follows three generations of a pioneer family and is often considered America's first modern historical drama; also in 1921 finished The Verge, one of the earliest American works of expressionist art; age 20 wrote ‘Society,’ a weekly that sarcastically criticized the upper-class
her writings were often set in her native Midwest and were often semi-autobiographical tales which typically explore contemporary social issues, such as gender, ethics, and dissent, while featuring deep, sympathetic characters who make principled stands
during the Great Depression she worked in Chicago for the Works Progress Administration, where she was Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project
her one-act play Trifles (1916) is frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theatre
as a child was considered "precocious" and would often rescue stray animals
by age 18 was earning a regular salary as a journalist for a local newspaper
became a leading member of Heterodoxy, an early feminist debating group composed of the premier women's rights crusaders
1922 moved to Greece with her husband but returned to the U.S. after his death in 1924
has been called "the First Lady of American Drama" and "the Mother of American Drama"
2003 the International Susan Glaspell Society was founded
did graduate work in English at the University of Chicago
wrote eleven of the one hundred plays produced by the Provincetown Players during its seven-year existence
1910, along with Cook, she led the fight against censorship in Davenport when the library board refused to buy a book titled The Finality of the Christian Religion
her last years were filled with illness and alcoholism
was greatly influenced by the writings of Black Hawk, the Sauk American Indian chief, on whose former land she was raised
at Drake University excelled as a debater, representing the school at the state debates her senior year