SOURCE: "Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)," in American Women Playwrights, 1900-1950, Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 36-57.

Shafer offers a concise literary biography of Glaspell and an appraisal of her work.

Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was one of the most talented and original women playwrights writing in the first half of the century. Her name is closely associated with the famous Provincetown Players which she and her husband George Cram Cook founded. Most of her plays were forgotten from the thirties to the eighties in the United States although her one-act Trifles was frequently anthologized and performed. In recent years Glaspell has attracted the attention of scholars and some of her plays have been revived. During her lifetime she wrote thirteen plays, fourteen novels, and over fifty short stories, essays, and articles. In 1931 she became the second woman playwright to receive the Pulitzer Prize. After receiving this award for Alison's House she wrote...