Ellen Glasgow was born in 1873 to a well-established Richmond, Virginia, family. A frail child, Glasgow led a secluded life and even was primarily educated at home. At the age of 16, she began to lose her hearing. This debility only increased her desire for solitude.

Glasgow began writing at a young age. By 1890, she had completed some 400 pages of a novel, Sharp Realities, but she destroyed it the following year after an unfavorable meeting with a publisher's agent in New York. Despite this failure, she began writing The Descendant that same year. The writing of fiction, however, was not deemed an appropriate behavior for a young southern woman. The novel was published in 1897, under the author "Anonymous." The Descendant drew immediate critical attention and was widely perceived to be work of the popular author Harold Frederick; Glasgow took being mistaken for a male writer as a compliment...