Top Menu
Drama*
   Back to List
(Authors are listed alphabetically)

Susan Glaspell   (1882-1948)

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.

A Forum on Susan Glaspell's Trifles
http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/Trifles/

Created and maintained by Eric Hibbison, this forum lists hundreds of student responses to Trifles.

American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site
http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm

Created by students at the University of South Florida, this site covers the following topics—"A Woman's Place: Literary Background for Glaspell's Trifles," "Biographical Influences on Glaspell's Trifles," "The Text of Trifles with Anchors for Primary Symbols and Images," "Studies in Liminality: A Review of Critical Commentary on Glaspell's Trifles," and a bibliography.

Preliminary Essay 2 Archive
http://web.missouri.edu/~engbob/courses/370/archives/pre2/2pr.html

These student essays on Trifles, which are in varying stages of development, focus on characters in the play.

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.




top


LitLinks
footer
Copyright © 1998, 1999, Bedford/St. Martin's