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Notes
I wish to express my thanks to the Richmond Area University Center for making the publication of these letters possible. I also wish to express my thanks to Professor Fredson Bowers, who called the letters to my attention and gave me much helpful advice about the preparation of the manuscript. I am indebted to Mr. John Wyllie, Librarian at the Alderman Library, and Mr. Oliver Steele of the University of Virginia, for information about the publication of Ellen Glasgow's novels.
Quoted in Burton J. Hendrick, The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page (1928), pp. 336-337.
The stories have not been identified. One is perhaps "Between Two Shores," published in McClure's in February, 1899.
Phases of an Inferior Planet, not finished at this time. A draft is mentioned as a "revised" version in a letter of November 22 to Walter Hines Page. See Letters of Ellen Glasgow, ed. Blair Rouse (1958), pp. 24-25.
Apparently the argument that the novel should be published by "a wholly English house" (see Letter 10).
Miss Glasgow might have offered Lane, the English publisher, her volume of poems mentioned in her letter of May 10, 1898. Lane never published any of her work.
An undated, unaddressed note appears to have been enclosed with Letter 12: "In the 3rd line on page 238 of the corrected proofs, I find a slight mistake which alters the sense of the words. The sentence, 'I have not one voter, but dozens,' was originally written, 'I have not one vote, but dozens.' Will you kindly see that this word 'voter' is changed to 'vote'." All of these changes were made for the English edition with the exception of one. "Fire-escape," which appears on page 43, line 12 of the Harper and Brothers edition, appears as "fire escape" on page 42, line 25 of the Heinemann edition. "Fire-escape" on page 14, line 14 of the Harper and Brothers edition was altered to "small iron balcony" on page 13, line 33 of the Heinemann edition. "I have not one vote, but dozens" appears in both the English and American editions (Harper and Brothers, page 238; Heinemann, page 228). "Gotten" appears as "got" in both the English and American editions.
The Voice of the People. Miss Glasgow refers to this novel in a letter to Walter Hines Page, March, 1898, as an "ambitious work which I have been planning for the past six months . . . ." See Rouse, ed. Letters, p. 26.
The reference in this and the next letter to Doubleday and McClure is an error for Doubleday, Page, and Company, which began operations under this name in January, 1900.
The Battle-Ground, begun in the fall of 1900 and finished by January, 1902. As Letter 28 shows, Heinemann refused this novel, which was published in England by Constable.
The letter appears to be misdated. The Wheel of Life, the novel referred to, was published in January, 1906.
The discussion was about the possible serialization of The Miller of Old Church, and the next day Reynolds wrote the following memorandum for his files: June 8, 1910 MISS ELLEN GLASGOW: She is working on a new novel, as I understand something like 40 chapters. She thinks she would give me 25 sometime in the summer. I told her the sooner the better. McClure and the American both asked to see it. I told her I thought I could place it. It is a story dealing with the new life in the south and the people who are coming up. There is no problem in it. She thinks there might be too much atmosphere and characterization to make it a good serial but thought it could be cut and condensed. Moffat Yard offered $2500 advance, and I think they would pay $3000 for a book. She said she was really committed to Doubleday, and apparently has made a contract with them to give them all of her books, so I didn't mention this offer. Moffat Yard thinks her books except the Battleground sold about 15000 copies. P. R. R. [Over the words "the Battleground" Reynolds pencilled: "about 30,000"]
On January 25, Reynolds made the following note on Virginia: Ellen Glasgow is working on a story of a woman's life down south since the war, her love affair, marriage, divorce and so forth. She doesn't expect it will be finished for at least a year and probably not published before two years. It is going to be an analytical story, and she thinks it is going to be something like 150,000 words. She is going to communicate with me a year from now and let me know how the story then is and I am to see if it can be sold. I told her I thought it was useless to mention it now, when it would be so long before it was completed. Doubleday, Page and Co. pay her a regular salary, so the book rights would go to them inevitably. P. R. R.
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