Gladys Hasty Carroll (1904 - 1999)

Genre: Non-Fiction, General Fiction

Born in South Berwick on 26 June 1904, Carroll grew up and lived most of her life in the house her grandfather built. She went to Berwick Academy and then graduated from Bates College in 1925 (B.A. English; honorary degree in 1945) and married Herbert A. Carroll (Bates '23; died 1983), whose work in psychology took them to Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and Minnesota, where Gladys Carroll began writing magazine articles and books. She was homesick and eventually the couple returned to Maine, her husband teaching at the Univ. of New Hampshire. The Carrolls had two children, Warren (1932) and Sarah [Watson] (1941). She died on 1 April 1999.

The Univ. of New Hampshire awarded Carroll an honorary master of arts in 1934, the year her book As the Earth Turns was made into a feature movie. Carroll also received UME's Maryann Hartman Award in 1995. She's featured in Down East Today (1938; Virginia Smith Hall), along with Mary Ellen Chase, Rachel Field, and Robert P. Tristram Coffin.

Her fiction includes her most famous novel, As the Earth Turns (1933/1995), a portrayal of Southern Maine rural life in the 1920s; a 1933 Book of the Month Club Maine Selection; nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) and these:

• Cockatoo (1929),
• Land Spell (1930), A Few Foolish Ones (1935), about four Maine families around 1870),
• Neighbor to the Sky (1937),
• Head of the Line (1942), short stories),
• Dunnybrook (1943/1978), fictional history and genealogy of South Berwick,
• While the Angels Sing (1947),
• West of the Hill (1949),
• Christmas without Johnny (1950),
• One White Star (1954),
• Sing Out the Glory (1957),
• Come with Me Home (1960),
• The Road Grows Strange (1965),
• The Light Here Kindled (1967), a multi-generational story that starts and ends in an old Maine farmhouse,
• Christmas Through the Years (1968), short stories,
• Man on the Mountain (1969), set in the 21st century, in a vast imaginary continent called Great Country, where citizens are strictly segregated according to age,
• Next of Kin (1974)

Carroll's non-fiction is mostly autobiographical and includes Only Fifty Years Ago (1962), To Remember Forever: The Journal of a College Girl, 1922-1923 (1963), New England Sees it Through, and Mist Through the Mirror (1969; essays), Years Away from Home (1972), about her time in Fall River, Mass.), and The Book That Came Alive (1979).

You can read more about Carroll in a 1996 Bates College magazine article. There's a short paragraph of background on Carroll through Univ. of Maine's Women in the Curriculum site.


Last Update: 08/01/2007

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