Green Bondage

by Frances Ione Ogilvie

published 1931  by Farrar and Rinehart, New York and London.

"Green Bondage" tells the story of the struggles and personal problems faced by a young couple starting out on a tobacco farm after World War I. According to one of Frances' friends, Frances conceived the idea for the novel from her father, Woods Ogilvie, M.D., who served a rural area in western Kentucky that has many tobacco farmers. Dr. Ogilvie shared stories with her of the hardships that they endured during the early days of this century.

    An account in the book of a man who burned his eyes while "firing tobacco" was told to Frances by her father. This and many of the other incidents in the novel were based on true stories.

    The novel was written in the south room, upstairs in the old ante-bellum home where Frances grew up. It was far removed from everyone, a place where she could be freed from interruptions.

    The Princeton (Kentucky) Art Guild perfomed the novel as a stage play for its annual Black Patch theater production in 1991. That successful adaptation was the work of local playwright, Nancy Taylor.

Other works by Frances Ogilvie:

Poems: "Lot's Wife," "To a Jewish Woman," "Grant Me No...," "A Spring Day".

Numerous short stories for magazines.

Unpublished novel, "Low Ceilings". It dealt with the subject of youth, reared in a home where the restrictions were so great that the lives of the children were cramped and constricted throughout their lives. While its prospective publishers felt that it was superior to "Green Bondage" from a literary standpoint, they decided that it had too grim a theme for its intended audience and did not publish it.

Reviews of "Green Bondage":

"Green Bondage" received excellent review throughout the nation, except from the New York Times, which gave it a mixed review.

    "The novel is justified because it opens up for readers of fiction a new region. But, the ancient round of burning the plant beds, the setting out of the young plants, the suckering, the killing of tobacco worms, the firing and the selling of the crop... these will usurp the place in the reader's memory that rightly belongs to the characters in the story," the Times review said, in part.

    Rosamond Milner, critic for the Louisville Courier-Journal, wrote for the March 22, 1933, edition:

    "The book's excellent reality depends on its truth...it is new material in fiction most effectively used. Miss Ogilvie has the final requisite of the novelist...the storyteller's poer to hold her reader intent from page to page. Her prose is always good and often beautiful...she has written, at age 26, a book that is head and shoulders above the average."

"Green Bondage can be checked-out  from Kentucky Wesleyan College through any library participating in the Inter-Library Loan program.   In the past, the Princeton (Kentucky) Art Guild has offered reprints of "Green Bondage". In 1991, it sold for $24.00, hard cover and $19.00, soft cover. The book contains some 204 pages.  

Portions of this article originally appeared in the March 1992 issue of Ogilvie Kith and Kin, Volume 10, Number 3, pages 28-29. Other portions are from the Caldwell County Times, Thursday October 10, 1991.