In Ellen Glasgow: a biography, Susan Goodman vividly brings the famously secretive writer to life, penetrating the myths, half-truths, and lies that have swirled around Glasgow since the publication of her first novel, The descendent, in 1896. Drawing on previously unpublished papers and personal interviews, Goodman uncovers the engrossing details of Glasgow's family history, social milieu, personal tragedies, and literary career. Glasgow emerges from these pages as a woman of great courage, self discipline, and indomitable will who survived a sickly childhood, the premature deaths of her mother, Anne, and favourite sister, Cary , and the suicides of her brother Frank and brother-in-law George Walter McCormack, as well as the deafness which afflicted her from her early twenties. Throughout her life, literature remained her driving passion, Goodman explores the genesis of each novel, detailing Glasgow's process of writing and offering incisive critical appraisals. In the novels which were her life's work, Glasgow sought a commitment to truth beyond human weakness,to what she called the 'living pulse' of experience. And in Ellen Glasgow: a biography, Susan Goodman has emulated her subject perfectly, uncovering Glasgow's rich and complicated inner life and reasserting Glasgow's important position in America's literary history.