The Virginia Edition of the Works of Ellen Glasgow (1938)

Summary

Richmond News Leader, 21 January 1938, p. 8

The historian of American literature not less than the bibliophile will be grateful for the Virginia Edition of Miss Ellen Glasgow's later novels. As issued yesterday in a superb limited edition of 810 copies, printed from type, the first three novels of the edition are Barren Ground, The Miller of Old Church and Vein of Iron. Each of these has a preface in which, with all the candor of her nature, all the wisdom of her maturity and all the wit of her youth, Miss Glasgow explains why and how the book was written. These prefaces are superb. Each illuminates the particular novel, the development of the writer's profound art, and, in a wider sense, the trend of the noblest American writing of the post-war era. No better antidote for the rude and sordid clumsiness of a certain school of fiction can be found anywhere. To these prefaces we shall have occasion many times to refer, because they become on first reading a part of every man's intellectual treasure-house. For the moment, may we say that this edition shows, more than ever, how slovenly and inadequately the cliche of “realism” describes Miss Glasgow's works? In the finest, best sense, hers are novels of realism, but, as one runs over them in mind and sees them together in this dignified format, they seem above all to be novels of courage. That is one of many reasons we are proud that this is styled the Virginia Edition.