In 1920 Gale's novella Miss Lulu Bett was published and quickly became a bestseller. Critics lauded Gale's new work as a welcome departure from her sentimental style of writing. Most read the work of fiction as a realistic portrayal of an average woman's life in small-town America.

Less than a year after this publication, Gale was approached to write a dramatic adaptation of the novella, which she did in less than two weeks. The play Miss Lulu Bett opened in December 1920 in New York City. For the dramatic version, Gale changed the ending: instead of having Lulu marry Cornish, she sends her heroine out alone in the world to make her own way, leading some of the play's earliest critics to compare it favorably with Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Harold P. Simonson, writing in Zona Gale, noted that the transformation to an "unromantic ending creates a...