E. Stanly Godbold Jr.

Can you give a book a negative-star review? I wish it were possible, because if I could, this one would get -5 stars. Normally if a book is that bad, I wouldn't even bother, but I have a reason for posting this book in my library and also writing this review. If you've studied literature at any university, chances are you haven't ever studied any of the novels of Ellen Glasgow. Quite frankly, E. Stanley Godbold Jr's biography of Glasgow is one of the reasons why.

Godbold wrote this biography when he was a young man; he was 30 years old when it was published in 1972, thr result of a PhD dissertation turned into a published biography. I don't know for sure why he chose this topic, since not once in the book does he ever display any sort of sympathetic understanding for his subject. One thing that's clear is that Godbold found a way to shortcut this project by using the unpublished research of another writer. The woman who was meant to write Glasgow's first biography was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the author of The Yearling, among other books. Rawlings had finished most of the research for the book and was ready to start writing when she died of a stroke in 1953. Her papers were given to the University of Florida, and that's where Godbold found a major part of his research for his dissertation.

Throughout this biography, Godbold's assertions and conclusions about Glasgow are simply outrageous and not supported by him with any evidence. Examples can be found in every chapter, almost every page, and I'll give a few here.

"Unlike men, dogs were creatures Ellen could possess and control, and dismiss when she did not feel like being bothered with them. The dogs provided her with an emotional prop at a time when her disillusionment with men had brought her to the verge of suicide. Her affection for dogs perhaps reveals that her anti-maleness involved sexual aversion."

"The autobiography reads like a woman talking to her psychiatrist. . . ."

"Although she disliked his novels and he had once written her an insolent letter making fun of her anti-vivisection crusade, they enjoyed a warm, if often bizarre and even pathetic, friendship for about four years."

The biography is full of Godbold's "revelations" about his subject--she "doubtless" thought this and she "apparently" thought that, with no backup for any of his nasty, belittling, misogynistic assertions.

Godbold went on to make a good career for himself in academia, teaching since 1977 in the Dept. of History at Mississippi State. He retired there in 2003 and is currently working on a biography of Jimmy Carter.

No thanks to Godbold, Glasgow's work is finally being published in good editions by the U of Virginia Press. Barren Ground and also Vein of Iron are just two of Glasgow's works that should be better known.… (altro)