On Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ＂a Jury of Her Peers＂: Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations

On a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Greenwich Village bohemians gathered in the summer of 1916, Susan Glaspell was inspired by a sensational murder trial to write Trifles, a play about two women who hide a Midwestern farm wife’s motive for murdering her abusive husband. Following successful productions of the play, Glaspell became the ＂mother of American drama.＂ Her short story version of Trifles, ＂A Jury of Her Peers,＂ reached an unprecedented one million readers in 1917. The play and the story have since been taught in classrooms across America and Trifles is regularly revived on stages around the world.

This collection of fresh essays celebrates the centennial of Trifles and ＂A Jury of Her Peers,＂ with departures from established Glaspell scholarship. Interviews with theater people are included along with two original works inspired by Glaspell’s iconic writings.

Martha C. Carpentier is a professor of 20th century literature at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. She is the author of The Major Novels of Susan Glaspell and editor or coeditor of Her America, Disclosing Intertextualities, and Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry. She is co-founder and president of the International Susan Glaspell Society and lives in Lebanon, New Jersey. Emeline Jouve is an assistant professor of American literature and culture at Champollion University and Toulouse Jean-Jaurès University, France. She is the author of several articles on American drama and theater and is the editor of ＂Staging Mobility in the United-States＂ for the online journal Miranda (2011). She lives in Toulouse, France.