Mrs. Charles Wilder Glass

Mrs. Charles Wilder Glass is a little-known early 20th-century author remembered today for speculative fiction with a strong spiritual and metaphysical streak. Records connected with utopian and science-fiction bibliography identify her as born in 1874, and surviving editions of her work show she published under her married name rather than a personal first name.

Her best-known surviving title is Ruth's Marriage in Mars: A Scientific Novel (1912), a story that blends science fiction, romance, and psychic or religious ideas. Bibliographic records also attribute Her Invisible Spirit Mate: A Scientific Novel and Psychological Lessons on How to Make the World More Beautiful (1917) to her, suggesting a writer deeply interested in inner life, ideal love, and visionary worlds.

Because so little biographical information is readily confirmed, much of her personal story remains obscure. Even so, the work that survives points to a distinctive voice from the fringes of early speculative fiction—one of the women who used imaginative fiction to explore faith, emotion, and life beyond the ordinary.