Author Guide · Drama & Fiction
Books Written by
In December 1900 a young reporter for the Des Moines Daily News covered the arrest of Margaret Hossack, an Iowa farm wife accused of killing her husband with an axe as he slept. Susan Glaspell filed twenty-six stories on the case. Sixteen years later, at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, she turned it into Trifles, a one-act play in which two women solve a murder from what they find in a kitchen, and played one of them herself. Glaspell, born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1876, co-founded the Provincetown Players, brought Eugene O’Neill to the stage, wrote nine novels and won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This guide covers her 10 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1915–1930 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Susan Glaspell wrote nine novels, about fifteen plays and more than fifty short stories. Her best-known works are Trifles (1916), its short-story version “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917), The Verge (1921), Fidelity (1915) and the Pulitzer-winning Alison’s House (1930). Start with Trifles: it takes under an hour to read, and the rest of her work makes more sense once you have seen what she does with it.
Where to Start with Susan Glaspell
If you want the play everyone studies
→ Trifles (1916) — a one-act murder mystery solved in a kitchen.
If you want the same story as fiction
→ A Jury of Her Peers (1917) — Trifles retold as a short story.
If you want a novel
→ Fidelity (1915) — a woman returns to the Iowa town she scandalised.
If you want her prize-winner
→ Alison’s House (1930) — the 1931 Pulitzer play inspired by Emily Dickinson.
10 Susan Glaspell Books, in Order
Fidelity
Ruth Holland, a banker’s daughter in Freeport, Iowa, runs away to the West with Stuart Williams, an older married man whose wife will not divorce him. Eleven years later she comes home to her dying father and finds that most of the town has not forgiven her. The novel draws on Glaspell’s own affair with the married George Cram Cook; it went through five editions in five weeks in Britain, and Marcia Noe’s study of Glaspell calls it her “best novel”. Belt Publishing reissued it in April 2026.
Suppressed Desires
A one-act satire on the fashion for Freudian psychoanalysis, written with Cook in 1915, the year the two of them started the Provincetown Players. Britannica describes it as “a satirical one-act play on popular Freudianism”.
Trifles
The farmer John Wright has been found strangled in his bed, and his wife Minnie is in jail. While the sheriff and the county attorney search the house for evidence, their wives, Mrs Hale and Mrs Peters, wait in the kitchen and piece together the motive from uneven quilt stitching and a dead canary — then hide what they have found. It opened on 8 August 1916 at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, with Glaspell as Mrs Hale, and was based on the Hossack murder case she had reported on in 1900.
The Outside
Two women have shut themselves away in a former lifesaving station on the dunes: a young woman whose husband has left her and her widowed servant. Over the course of the play both come to see that life need not end with desertion or death, and turn back towards the world.
A Jury of Her Peers
A year after Trifles succeeded on stage, Glaspell rewrote it as a short story with the same characters and the same case. Story and play are now standard texts in literature and Women’s Studies courses, and the story title was used when Alfred Hitchcock Presents adapted it for television in December 1961.
Inheritors
Three generations of a Midwestern college, from its founding in 1879 by the farmer Silas Morton and a Hungarian refugee to its fortieth anniversary. The founder’s granddaughter, Madeline Morton, faces jail for standing up for Indian students who protest against British rule. A Liverpool Echo reviewer wrote that it “will live when Liverpool is a rubbish heap”.
The Verge
Claire Archer, a plant breeder, works in a greenhouse to create plant forms that have never existed, among them the Edge Vine and the Breath of Life. Rejecting the roles of wife and mother, she pushes towards an “otherness” that ends in madness and in her strangling the man she loves. It was first performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on 14 November 1921.
The Road to the Temple
Her biography of, and tribute to, George Cram Cook, her husband and co-founder of the Provincetown Players. It follows him from Davenport to Provincetown and New York and finally to Greece, where the couple moved in 1922 and where Cook died at Delphi in 1924.
Brook Evans
In Illinois in 1888 Naomi Kellogg is pregnant when her lover Joe Copeland dies in a farming accident, and she marries the strict Caleb Evans and moves to Colorado. Nineteen years later her daughter Brook wants to go to a dance with a young man Caleb disapproves of, and the quarrel brings out the truth about who Brook’s father was. Paramount filmed it as The Right to Love (1930), starring Ruth Chatterton, with a script by Zoë Akins.
Alison’s House
Iowa, 1899: eighteen years after the death of Alison Stanhope, the country’s foremost poet, her family must sell her house, and what she left behind raises the question of whether she gave up the man she loved to protect the family’s reputation. Glaspell drew on the life of Emily Dickinson. It opened at Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre in New York on 1 December 1930 and won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In What Order to Read Susan Glaspell
None of Glaspell’s books continue from one another, so there is no series order to follow. Her plays are short and come first for most readers: Trifles, then “A Jury of Her Peers” to see how she rewrote the same case for the page, then The Verge and Inheritors for her full-length theatre.
Her novels came in two phases, before the Provincetown years and after Cook’s death. Fidelity (1915) and Brook Evans (1928) are the best places to start; Alison’s House brings the two strands together, a play about a woman writer’s unpublished work and the family that controls it.
A reading path
1. Trifles (1916)
2. “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917)
3. The Verge (1921)
4. Fidelity (1915)
5. Alison’s House (1930)
Everything Else Susan Glaspell Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 13 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
7
7 books · 1909–1945
- 1909The Glory of the Conqueredher first novel; The New York Times praised its “fine and notable gifts”
- 1911The Visioningher second novel
- 1929Fugitive’s Returnnovel
- 1931Ambrose Holt and Familythe modern “free woman” and the pioneer inheritance
- 1939The Morning Is Near Usa Literary Guild selection that sold more than 100,000 copies
- 1942Norma Ashenovel on the failures of Midwestern isolationism
- 1945Judd Rankin’s Daughterher last novel, on the same theme
Stories
1
1 book · 1912
- 1912Lifted Masksher collection of previously published stories
Other plays and books
5
5 books · 1917–1940
- 1917Close the Bookone-act play for the Provincetown Players
- 1918Woman’s Honorone-act play
- 1919Berniceher first full-length play
- 1927The Comic Artistplay written with Norman Matson
- 1940Cherished and Shared of Olda book for children
The years · 1876–1948
Quick facts about Susan Glaspell
- Known for
- Susan Glaspell is known as the co-founder of the Provincetown Players and the author of Trifles, the one-act play in which two women quietly solve, and conceal, a murder.
- 1876
- Born in Davenport, Iowa
- 1916
- Trifles
- 1931
- Pulitzer Prize for Alison’s House
- 1948
- Dies in Provincetown, Massachusetts
- Born
- 1 July 1876, Davenport, Iowa
- Died
- 28 July 1948, Provincetown, Massachusetts, aged 72
- Education
- Drake University, Des Moines, 1899; then a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News
- Married
- The writer George Cram Cook, in 1913; he died in Greece in 1924
- Theatre
- Co-founded the Provincetown Players with Cook in 1915; it produced eleven of her plays
- Honours
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1931, for Alison’s House
- 1930s
- Directed the Midwest Play Bureau of the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago
The red mark is 1916: Trifles, first staged at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown with Glaspell as Mrs Hale.
How Susan Glaspell Writes: The Woman Who Is Not There
Glaspell often builds a play around a woman who never appears. Minnie Wright, the accused in Trifles, is never on stage; neither is the title character of Bernice, or the dead poet of Alison’s House. The audience learns who she is from what other people say and from what she left behind: a quilt, a birdcage, her poems.
Her reporting years show in the detail. Trifles came from the twenty-six stories she filed on the Hossack case, and its evidence is domestic and concrete — uneven stitching, an empty birdcage, a dead canary — which the men in the play dismiss as trifles. Her novels work the same Midwestern ground, small Iowa and Illinois towns where a woman who breaks the rules, like Ruth Holland in Fidelity, finds out what belonging costs.
In The Verge she went further, into an experimental, expressionist play about a woman who wants to escape every given form, and critics ranked her above Eugene O’Neill, whose first plays she helped bring to the stage. Her reputation faded after the 1940s and was rebuilt by feminist critics from the late 1970s. For another writer of the period who put a confined woman at the centre of her work, see Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Frequently asked questions about Susan Glaspell’s books
How many books has Susan Glaspell written?
Nine novels, about fifteen plays, more than fifty short stories, one story collection (Lifted Masks, 1912), a biography of George Cram Cook and a children’s book. This page lists her 10 key works, from Fidelity (1915) to Alison’s House (1930).
What are Susan Glaspell’s books in order?
The key works are Fidelity (1915), Suppressed Desires (1915), Trifles (1916), The Outside (1917), “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917), Inheritors (1921), The Verge (1921), The Road to the Temple (1927), Brook Evans (1928) and Alison’s House (1930). Her novels in order are The Glory of the Conquered (1909), The Visioning (1911), Fidelity (1915), Brook Evans (1928), Fugitive’s Return (1929), Ambrose Holt and Family (1931), The Morning Is Near Us (1939), Norma Ashe (1942) and Judd Rankin’s Daughter (1945).
Where should I start with Susan Glaspell?
With Trifles (1916), a one-act play that takes under an hour to read. Then read “A Jury of Her Peers”, her short-story version of it. For a novel, start with Fidelity (1915).
What is Susan Glaspell’s most famous work?
Trifles (1916), together with its short-story version “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917). Both are staples of theatre and Women’s Studies courses. Her Pulitzer Prize came for a different play, Alison’s House.
Did Susan Glaspell win a Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. Alison’s House, which opened at the Civic Repertory Theatre in New York on 1 December 1930, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1931.
Is Trifles based on a true story?
Yes. As a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News, Glaspell covered the case of Margaret Hossack, who said in December 1900 that an intruder had killed her husband John with an axe while she slept beside him. Glaspell filed twenty-six stories; Hossack was convicted, and a retrial in April 1903 ended without a unanimous verdict.
What is the difference between Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers?
They tell the same story. Trifles (1916) is the one-act play; “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917) is the short story Glaspell wrote a year later with the same characters and the same case.
Has Susan Glaspell’s work been adapted?
Brook Evans was filmed by Paramount as The Right to Love (1930), with Ruth Chatterton; it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Trifles was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1961 as “A Jury of Her Peers”, and as a chamber opera in 2010.
What was Susan Glaspell’s connection to Eugene O’Neill?
She and George Cram Cook founded the Provincetown Players in 1915, and O’Neill was introduced to the group in 1916. Glaspell is credited with discovering him, and in her lifetime English critics ranked her above him.
When did Susan Glaspell die?
On 28 July 1948 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, aged 72. Her novels went out of print after her death and were rediscovered from the late 1970s; the International Susan Glaspell Society was founded in 2003.
Footnotes
- Susan Glaspell — Wikipedia
- Susan Glaspell — Britannica
- About Susan Glaspell — International Susan Glaspell Society
- Trifles (play) — Wikipedia
- Alison’s House — Wikipedia
- The Right to Love (1930 film) — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing.”
— Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1916), spoken by Mrs Hale
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations