Susan Glaspell   (1882-1948) Trifles LINKS Trifles: A Play in One Act http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixednew?id=GlaTrif&tag =public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed This online version of the play is maintained at the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library. BIOGRAPHY Susan Glaspell (1882–1948) Born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, Glaspell began her career as a novelist and author of sentimental short stories for popular magazines. By 1915, she had turned her energies to the theater, becoming one of the founders of the Provincetown Players, a group devoted to experimental drama. In 1916, Glaspell moved with the company, now called the Playwright's Theatre, to Greenwich Village in New York, where for two seasons—as writer, director, and actor—she played an important role in a group that came to have a major influence on the development of American drama. Trifles was written to be performed with a group of one-act plays by Eugene O'Neill at the company's summer playhouse on Cape Cod. Also among her longer plays that embody a feminist perspective are The Verge (1921) and Allison's House (1931), a Pulitzer Prize–winning drama based upon the life of Emily Dickinson. Among more than forty short stories, some twenty plays, and ten novels, Glaspell's best works deal with the theme of the "new woman," presenting a protagonist who embodies the American pioneer spirit of independence and freedom.