Regarding Ellen Glasgow: Essays for Contemporary Readers.

Edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor and George C. Longest. (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2001. Pp. xxii, 202. $25.00, ISBN 0-88490-188-2.)

Regarding Ellen Glasgow is a collection of essays that will appeal to both scholars and general readers. Fourteen essays, seven interviews, and a chronology compose the volume, which is illustrated with photographs of Glasgow, her family and contemporaries, and locations important to her and her work. Also included are woodcuts by Julius John Lankes, who produced images for several Glasgow novels. In their preface, editors Welford Dunaway Taylor and George C. Longest assert that the collection is "more than a memorial" of the fifty-year anniversary of Glasgow's death; it should "convey a sense of how [Glasgow] is perceived by the present generation" (p. xii). Including the work of a variety of scholars, established and new, and a variety of approaches, the essays provide convincing evidence of the vitality of Glasgow studies.

The volume opens with a strong and fitting essay by Catherine Rainwater. In "Through a Gate and into Another Life: Ellen Glasgow After 1945," Rainwater explains the ways in which literary history has contributed to Glasgow's "perennial underappreciation" (p. 3). In a brief survey of "the state of Glasgow studies at century's end," she concludes with the hope that the University Press of Virginia will continue to publish editions of Glasgow's work, thereby increasing the critical work on "this long-underestimated, frequently misunderstood American author" (pp. 11-12).

Equally strong is E. Stanley Godbold Jr.'s brief essay "Ellen Glasgow and Southern History," which is followed by Godbold and Dorothy M. Scura's "Ellen Glasgow's Civil War Richmond in The Battle-Ground"; both make an implicit argument for including her novels as texts in history courses. These historical essays are followed by chapters displaying feminist concerns--southern womanhood and Glasgow-as-suffragist, for example. Other essays address southern masculinity, Calvinism, and Glasgow's hearing. Regarding Ellen Glasgow also contains pieces that focus on lesser-known works (such as Glasgow's short stories) and a comparison of the novel In This Our Life with its film version. Julius Rowan Raper's essay addresses "major gaps in our understanding of the woman and her work," two of which "involve her dramatizations of black characters and our lack of knowledge about her mysterious lover, Gerald B." (p. 127). While the latter is a biographical question, Raper argues that the solution to this mystery "may lead to a store of documents or other information about Glasgow and through that new knowledge to a fuller comprehension of the literary work to which she devoted her life" (p. 137).

The last essay, Tricia Pearsall's "Ellen Glasgow's Richmond," echoes the volume's early historical pieces and serves as an introduction to the concluding chapter of excerpted interviews with seven persons "who had known Ellen Glasgow in various capacities" (p. 155). These interviews are the least satisfying portion of the book, since they do not provide new or particularly useful information. But this is a minor weakness. Unlike many collections of essays, this one should be read in its entirety. Regarding Ellen Glasgow points toward new directions for future studies of "this enigmatic woman who cleared the ground for the South's literary rebirth ..." (p. 128).

NANCY CHINN
Baylor University