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Susan Glaspell: Alison's House: A Play in Three Acts (1930)

By Noelia Hernando-Real (La Salle College-Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Indexing Data:

  • Domain: Literature, Theatre.
  • Genre: Play.
  • Country: USA, North America.

Life, Works and Times

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Alison’s House earned Susan Glaspell the Pulitzer Prize in 1931. Glaspell was the second woman to achieve the drama prize, following Zona Gale for Miss Lulu Bett (1921). Alison’s House, nevertheless, has always been one of the most polemical of Glaspell’s plays with many supporters as well as detractors. Ominously, Glaspell, who had separated from the Provincetown Players in 1922, could not find a theatre to produce her play. The Theatre Guild rejected it. However, Eva Le Gallienne, director of the Civic Repertory Theatre, supported the play and performed the role of the protagonist, Elsa (Ozieblo 238). Glaspell’s friends recall that “Seeing Susan in those days when she was first plunging her mind into [Ali

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Published 20 December 2007

Citation: Hernando-Real, Noelia. "Alison's House: A Play in Three Acts". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 December 2007.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16008, accessed 9 February 2010.]