The Voice of the People was published by Doubleday, Page in 1900, and it was Glasgow’s first significant commercial success — the novel that established her as a serious novelist and introduced the themes she would develop over the next four decades. The story follows Nicholas Burr, the son of a poor farmer in rural Virginia, who is educated by a sympathetic judge, studies law, enters politics, and rises to become governor of the state.
Nicholas’s trajectory is a version of the American dream — the self-made man rising through talent and determination — but Glasgow treats it with an irony that distinguishes her from the Horatio Alger tradition. Nicholas can change his position but not his origins, and the Virginia aristocracy, however much it respects his abilities, never fully accepts him. His love affair with Eugenia Battle, a young woman of the planter class, is thwarted not by any personal failing but by the class barrier that her family, however progressive, cannot bring itself to cross.
The novel ends with Nicholas’s violent death at the hands of a mob — a conclusion that shocked readers in 1900 but that Glasgow intended as a statement about the persistence of violence in Southern culture and the vulnerability of democratic leaders who challenge the existing order. The “voice of the people” can be raised in protest or in fury, and the difference is not always clear.
Collecting The Voice of the People
First edition (Doubleday, Page, New York, 1900): Green cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, good condition: $40–$100
- Later editions: $5–$15