An edition of Novels and stories (1994)

Novels and stories

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July 14, 2024 | History
An edition of Novels and stories (1994)

Novels and stories

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In her nuanced and sharply etched novels and short stories, Sarah Orne Jewett captured the innerlife 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.

Here is the first 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 writings Willa 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 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.

This volume features a chronology of Jewett's life, useful explanatory notes, and an account of the textual history of each of the works included.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
937

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Novels and stories
Novels and stories
1994, Library of America, Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Books
in English
Cover of: Novels and stories
Novels and stories
1994, Library of America, Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Books
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Deephaven
A country doctor
The country of the pointed firs
Dunnet Landing stories
Selected stories and sketches.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 931-937).

Published in
New York
Series
Library of America -- 69
Genre
Fiction

The Physical Object

Pagination
x, 937 p. ;
Number of pages
937

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL23261727M
Internet Archive
novelsstories00jewe
ISBN 10
0940450747
LCCN
93024167
Library Thing
140545
Goodreads
360369

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