The Remarkable Kinship of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Ellen Glasgow

During the last year of her life, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings took on the arduous task of collecting materials toward a biography she intended to write on her deceased friend, Ellen Glasgow. The two authors met through correspondences they exchanged about their novels. Glasgow was drawn to Rawlings’s sympathy for animals and enthusiasm for nature. Rawlings discovered in Glasgow a writer who was able to articulate the same experiences she underwent when beginning and finishing writing projects. In The Remarkable Kinship of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Ellen Glasgow, Ashley Lear examines the documents collected by Rawlings on Glasgow, along with her personal notes, to better understand the experiences that brought these two women writers together and the importance of literary friendships between women writers. Glasgow and Rawlings were pioneers of American literature, similarly characterized as regional writers and known for writing novels that were not typical of other women writing during their respective periods. This study sheds new light on the complexities of their professional success and personal struggles, both of which led them to find friendship and sympathy with one another.