To read the reviews reprinted in this volume is to trace the story of the critical response to Ellen Glasgow's work in journals and in newspapers from the publication of The Descendant, her first novel, in 1897 to the publication of A Certain Measure, a volume of criticism, in 1943. Between 1897 and 1943, she published nineteen novels, a volume of poems, a volume of short stories, and a collection of prefaces to thirteen of her novels. Two collected editions of her work also appeared in those years: The Old Dominion Edition of the Works of Ellen Glasgow (1929-33) and The Virginia Edition of the Works of Ellen Glasgow (1938). Other works, not included in this volume, were published posthumously: her autobiography, The Woman Within (1954); a selection of her letters, edited by Blair Rouse (1958); a collection of short stories, edited by Richard Meeker (1963); and a novella, Beyond Defeat, edited by Luther Gore (1966). Recently, Julius Raper has collected other unpublished material, including essays and interviews, in Ellen Glasgow's Reasonable Doubts (1988).

Glasgow was born 22 April 1873, eight years after the close of the Civil War, and she died 21 November 1945, three months after the close of World War II. When her first novel was published, in 1897, Queen Victoria was on the throne in England and William McKinley was in the White House; when her last work was published, in 1943, King George VI occupied the throne and Franklin D. Roosevelt the White House.