num_pages: 304
description: The writer Fredrick P.W. McDowell states that Ellen Glasgow is possibly the most neglected novelist in her generation, "Miss Glasgow's art lies in her detached ironical view of human experience, and the best of her novels achieve their distinction through the combination of irony with a pervasive human sympathy." This the first full-length study devoted to Ellen Glasgow from her first novel in 1897 to the last in 1941. Each of the nineteen novels is considered chronologically to establish its individual aesthetic significance, its place in the author's development as an artist, and its relevance to Southern social history. This book also contains a comprehensive bibliography of Ellen Glasgow's work and life. Mr. McDowell sees Ellen Glasgow as a transitional figure in the development of our literature. As a novelist she stands between the romanticism of the local color writer and the revolutionary naturalism and psychological realism of writers as various as Theodore Dreiser and William Faulkner. In her revolt against the sentimental tendency of the South to obscure social reality, she analyzed with honesty and astuteness the inadequacies of Virginia life and manners. She also anticipated the interest of present-day southern writers, especially in her concern with "the dignity of greatness and the pitiable corruption of human nature."
language: English
title: Ellen Glasgow and the Ironic Art of Fiction
titlecomplete: Ellen Glasgow and the Ironic Art of Fiction
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr