She moved back to Davenport to focus on writing fiction. Unlike many new writers, she readily had her stories accepted and was published by the most widely read periodicals, including "Harper's", "Munsey's", "Ladies' Home Journal", and "Woman's Home Companion". It was a golden age of short stories. She used a large cash prize from a short story magazine to finance her move to Chicago, where she wrote her first novel, "The Glory of the Conquered", published in 1909. It was a best-seller, and "The New York Times" declared, "Unless Susan Glaspell is an assumed name covering that of some already well-known author—and the book has qualities so out of the ordinary in American fiction and so individual that this does not seem likely—"The Glory of the Conquered" brings forward a new author of fine and notable gifts."