The Sheltered Life

Gholson, Ellen Anderson Glasgow, an American novelist who lived from April 22, 1873, to November 21, 1945, was the recipient of the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book in This Our Life. She received positive reviews for her 20 novels and short stories. Unlike the romantic escapism that typified Southern literature following Reconstruction, Glasgow, a lifelong Virginian, depicted the evolving South in a realistic way. The young Glasgow, who was born on April 22, 1873, in Richmond, Virginia, was raised differently from other ladies of her aristocratic class than her mother, Anne Jane Gholson (1831-1893), and her husband, Francis Thomas Glasgow. Glasgow had the equivalent of a high school education at home in Richmond due to her bad health, which was later diagnosed as chronic heart illness. Despite this, she studied extensively in European and British literature, social and political theory, and philosophy. Glasgow authored 20 novels, a book of short tales, a book of poetry, and a book of literary criticism during the course of more than 40 years of literary output. When she was 24 years old, her debut book, The Descendant (1897), was published under pseudonyms after being written in secret. After her mother passed away in 1893, she partially destroyed the manuscript.