This Goodly Land

Harriet Hassell (September 27, 1911–October 19, 1970)

Other Names Used

• Harriet Hassell Gross: married name

Alabama Connections

• Tuscaloosa County: birthplace, childhood residence, adult residence
• Northport, Tuscaloosa County: brief residence
• Greensboro, Hale County: brief residence
• Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County: education

Selected Works

• Hassell, Harriet. Rachel's Children. New York: Harper, 1938. Rpt. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990.

Literary Awards

• First place, Story magazine short-story contest, 1937, for "History of the South"

Biographical Information

Harriet Hassell was born and grew up on her family’s farm near Northport, Ala., in Tuscaloosa County. At age fifteen, she enrolled at the University of Alabama where she decided to become a writer. She left the University before completing her degree and went home to the farm to work on her writing. Hassell returned to the University seven years later and enrolled in Hudson Strode’s fiction-writing class. Her short story “History of the South” won a national contest and was included in an anthology of stories from Strode’s students, Spring Harvest. The following summer, Hassell wrote Rachel’s Children, which was published in 1938. Although the novel was well-liked by critics, and she received a fellowship that year to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vt., Hassell did not publish again. She married a local attorney and moved with him to Port Washington, Long Island, N.Y. She was living there at the time of her death.

Interests and Themes

Harriet Hassell’s novel, Rachel’s Children, has been described as a Southern female version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is set on a fictional version of her family’s farm in Tuscaloosa County.

For More Information

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There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Book Prefaces

• Beidler, Philip D. Introduction: The World of Rachel's Children. Rachel's Children by Harriet Hassell. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, . vii-xvi.

Reference Web Sites

• Beidler, Philip. "Harriet Hassell". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2010. Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2509.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.