Date of Award

8-1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Welford D. Taylor

Second Advisor

Dr. Dona Hickey

Abstract

Biographers and critics tend to vary widely on the attention given to the personal, intellectual, and literary significance of the friendship between Ellen Glasgow and Mary Johnston. In this thesis, the author argues that the two women, obviously drawn together because of personal and professional similarities, shared intellectual interests, a passion for writing, and certainly nurtured each other's creativity. By providing extensive evidence from Mary Johnston's unpublished diaries, notebooks, and journals, as well evidence from the abundance of published and unpublished correspondence between the two women, this thesis refutes past critical assessments and establishes that the relationship between Glasgow and Johnston was indeed intellectual and significant rather than superficially social. This thesis makes the argument that Mary Johnston's own life and ideas, as well as the life engendered in her fiction, affected the life and literary career of Ellen Glagow, much as Glasgow's real and fictional lives influenced Johnston's.

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