The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

SUSAN GLASPELL (1882-1948)

Susan Glaspell was not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright but a novelist and writer of short stories that established her as an important writer of local-colour fiction. Born in Davenport, Iowa, she relied on her Midwestern roots to nurture a writing career that took her to Provincetown, Massachusetts (where she founded the Provincetown Players with Eugene O'Neill), to New York City 's Greenwich Village, and to Greece.

Always a woman ahead of her time, Glaspell graduated from Davenport public schools and Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. She served for two years as a court and legislative reporter for the «Des Moines Daily News» before turning to writing for women's magazines full-time in 1901. Her short stories for such publications as «Good Housekeeping» and «Women's Home Companion» were set in the fictional town of Freeport, Iowa, which she based on her home town of Davenport. Her work treated romantic problems in a formula that incorporated setting the problem, flashbacks, obstacles overcome, and a happy ending. She also set out consciously to record the unique qualities of her region, including the strengths and failings of people who came of pioneer stock but possessed a small-town mentality.

After Glaspell met and married George Cram Cook, a well-to-do rebel against Davenport 's small-town pretensions, her work began to incorporate politically idealist overtones, including pacifist and socialist views. She moved away from the local-colour tradition's emphasis on sentimentality and began to employ realism to discuss more contemporary themes.

From 1913 to 1922, Glaspell wrote seven one-act and four full-length plays, including the one-act play «Trifles,» which she rewrote as the short story «A Jury of Her Peers.» The plot is based on an actual case that Glaspell covered as a reporter in Des Moines involving an abusive husband. «A Jury of Her Peers» is a strong example of writing that transcends local-colour conventions to become a classic of realism. Here Glaspell demonstrates how the straightforward delivery of dialogue in ordinary voices can make a poignant and powerful point. The carefully drawn setting is one of the earliest examples of regional writing in a genre that now thrives on the enrichment of formula with descriptions of distinctly American environments.