SOURCE: "Poems and Short Stories," in Ellen Glasgow, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1982, pp. 175-88.

In the following excerpt, Thiébaux considers the chief interest in Glasgow's stories to be their treatment of themes developed more fully in her novels.

Early in Glasgow's career, her editor, Walter Hines Page, urged her to put her best efforts in her novels, and for the most part she followed his advice:

I shall write no more short stories and I shall not divide my power or risk my future reputation. I will become a great novelist or none at all. For which determination you are in part responsible.²

It is true that she liked to explore history, heredity, the long, unfolding causes of things. For this she needed the spaciousness of the novel; the compression the short story demanded was less congenial. After publishing three stories in her early career, she did not...