The Battle-Ground (1902)

Summary

“The Battle-Ground: Ellen Glasgow's New Story of Life in Virginia” Louisville Courier-Journal, 29 March 1902, sec. 1, p. 5

Virginia's place in the statehood of letters is a proud one. Her very name is one to conjure with. Out of that gallant array of soldiers and statesmen, fair women and brave men who have made the history of the Old Dominion, the historian in fiction has seen rich and fascinating material. And back of these people is a record fairly aglow with the passion of great emotions and tender with the pathos of magnificent conflict. It is a story splendid with incident from that early day when the Puritan and Cavalier mingled on her shores through the long and turbulent years to the present.

The historian of that colonial day is Mary Johnston, who has caught all the fine romance of the cavalier day. But it has remained for Ellen Glasgow to be the best depicter of the dramatic period, the reconstruction, when the great State, torn by war, rallied for new life and new hope. In The Voice of the People Miss Glasgow presented a masterly story of the new and altered conditions which grew out of the war. It was a remarkable achievement in fiction, the first fulfillment of a golden promise held out by her two earlier books.

When it was announced that Miss Glasgow had taken the Civil War period as the time of her fourth book, a wide interest was aroused.