Novels and stories /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In her nuanced and sharply etched novels and short stories, Sarah Orne Jewett captured the inner life and hidden emotional drama of outwardly quiet New England coastal towns. Set against the background of long Maine winters, hardscrabble farms, and the sea, her stories of independent, capable women struggling to find fulfillment in their lives and work have a surprisingly modern resonance. The Library of America edition is the first one-volume collection to include all her best fiction and it reveals the full stature of the writer Willa Cather ranked with Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Jewett struck her characteristic note in her first collection, Deephaven (1877), stories whose exploration of Maine life moved and delighted readers when they were first published in the Atlantic Monthly , and opened a new vein of regional fiction in American literature. Of the distinctly local quality of her writing, Cather later said: "The language her people speak to each other is a native tongue. No writer can invent it. It is made in the hard school of experience, in communities where language has been undisturbed long enough to take on color and character from the nature and experiences of the people."

The novel A Country Doctor (1884), inspired by both her own life and that of her doctor father, is often read as a veiled autobiography. Her focus here is on a woman who must choose between marriage and her commitment to a medical career, a decision she defends passionately against the narrowness of those around her: "God would not give us the same talents if what were right for men were wrong for women."

Jewett's masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), brings to imaginative life the faded trading port of Dunnet Landing, Maine, re-creating in spare, impressionistic prose the rhythms and textures of a communal society of poor fishermen and farmers, with its traditional country of rituals and its stoically endured tragedies. In these linked stories we meet some of Jewett's most unforgettable characters--a woman who withdraws from society to live alone on an island, a retired sea captain haunted by old superstitions, a herb-gatherer keeping alive an old knowledge of homeopathic remedies.

In the related "Dunnet Landing stories," Jewett offers further glimpses of her fictional town, often delineating with unique sensitivity the theme of older people striving to live with dignity and security. Other stories include "A White Heron," about a girl's love for both a young ornithologist and the heron for which he is searching, the haunting "Miss Tempy's Watchers," and more tales humorous, satiric, and poignant.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This hearty volume combines the longer pieces Deephaven , A Country Doctor , The Country of the Pointed Firs , and Dunnet Landing Stories with a selection of shorter stories and sketches and commentary by Professor Michael Davitt Bell. This fine addition to the series is tailor-made for American literature and women's collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine on September 3, 1849. Unable to attend school because of arthritis, she learned about coastal life in New England as she accompanied her father, a doctor, on his rounds. He encouraged both her reading and her writing. When she began submitting fiction in 1867, using the pseudonyms A. D. Eliot, Alice Eliot, and Sarah C. Sweet, her chosen topic was often the life and people of her native, rural Maine.

Her first published story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869 and her first short story collection, Deephaven, was published in 1877. Her first novel, A Country Doctor was published in 1884. Her other works include A Marsh Island (1885), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), A Native of Winby (1893), Tales of New England (1894) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). She stopped writing in 1902, after a fall left her with severe head injuries. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on June 24, 1909.

(Bowker Author Biography)