On July 1, 1876, Susan Keating Glaspell was born in Davenport, Iowa. Her father, a salesman, was a devout member of the Disciples of Christ but maintained a weakness for swearing and horse-racing. When she was young, he allowed her to accompany him to homesteads in Iowa and the surrounding states, giving Glaspell a favorable impression of the people who lived and farmed in the region, which she later explored in her fiction.
After high school, Glaspell became a local reporter in the hopes of becoming a writer. She then graduated with a philosophy degree from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and began to write for the Des Moines Daily News in 1899. While working as a journalist,...
