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Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories

Deephaven | A Country Doctor | The Country of the Pointed Firs | Dunnet Landing stories | selected stories and sketches More

Edited by Michael Davitt Bell

“This handsome Library of America edition contains Jewett’s three novels and more than two dozen short stories, as well as a chronology of her life and notes on the texts. Its publication signals Jewett’s inclusion in the pantheon of great American writers, joining the ranks of Mark Twain (with whom she has been compared), Jack London, Henry David Thoreau, and Willa Cather.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Circus at Denby “
September 3, 2020

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Passing of Sister Barsett”
September 3, 2019

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Town Poor”
September 1, 2019

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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.

Michael Davitt Bell (1941–1997), volume editor, was J. Leland Miller Professor of American History, Literature, and Eloquence at Williams College.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels & Stories is kept in print by a gift from Patricia and Donald Oresman to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Circus at Denby “
September 3, 2020

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Passing of Sister Barsett”
September 3, 2019

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “The Town Poor”
September 1, 2019

Story of the Week Sarah Orne Jewett, “Decoration Day”
May 31, 2017
Table of Contents

Deephaven

A Country Doctor

The Country of the Pointed Firs

Dunnet Landing Stories
The Queen’s Twin
A Dunnet Shepherdess
The Foreigner
William’s Wedding

Selected Stories and Sketches
An Autumn Holiday
From a Mournful Villager
An October Ride
Tom’s Husband
Miss Debby’s Neighbors
The Dulham Ladies
Marsh Rosemary
A White Heron
Miss Tempy’s Watchers
A Winter Courtship
Going to Shrewsbury
The White Rose Road
The Town Poor
A Native of Winby
Looking Back on Girlhood
The Passing of Sister Barsett
Decoration Day
The Flight of Betsey Lane
The Hilton’s Holiday
The Only Rose
The Guests of Mrs. Timms
Aunt Cynthy Dallett
Martha’s Lady
The Gray Mills of Farley

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ISBN: 978-0-94045074-5 938 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 69 Library of America Series

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