Ellen Glasgow

In The Builders, novelist Ellen Glasgow considers the tumultuous changes ushered in by World War I through the lens of the shifting political landscape in her home state of Virginia. Business tycoon David Blackburn is the emblem for these changes, exemplifying the rising upper class of new money and the shifting roles of men and their relationships with women.

Dive into a richly detailed historical romance that provides a fascinating glimpse into nineteenth-century life in the American South, with a sweeping perspective that considers the challenges facing the working classes, the landed gentry, and everyone in between. An engrossing read for anyone who likes to learn from their romance fiction reads!

Rather than consistently falling back on romance as an overarching framework for her novels, as did many of her peers, Virginia-born writer Ellen Glasgow often preferred the rough-and-tumble world of politics as a lens through which to explore the human condition. In One Man in His Time, an up-and-coming politician confounds many of the longstanding mores of Southern society.

In the 1800s, the American South was a highly stratified society in which different classes rarely intermingled. By the early twentieth century, the rise of a new class of nouveau riche titans of industry began to change that. It is against this backdrop of transition that Ellen Glasgow sets her novel The Romance of a Plain Man. The story follows poor but honorable Ben Starr as he works his way up the socioeconomic ladder in pursuit of the