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Sarah Orne Jewett

 
Biography: Sarah Orne Jewett
 
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The American Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was a regional novelist whose work depicted Maine settings and personalities.

Sarah Orne Jewett was born in the village of South Berwick, Maine, on Sept. 3, 1849. Because she suffered from arthritis and could not attend school regularly, her formal education at Berwick Academy was intermittent. Her father, a distinguished obstetrician, encouraged her to read widely in his library, and she accompanied him on his visits to patients in the countryside. She read the major English and European writers and also important American authors, such as Emerson, Lowell, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Talks with her father about the country and the seacoast and about his patients' lives and characters, and talks with the patients in their homes saturated the budding author with firsthand information. Her adoration of her father was so strong, apparently, that it prevented her from ever falling in love.

Jewett's first story was published in 1868, when she was 19, and the next year another story initiated her long association with the Atlantic Monthly and other prestigious magazines. William Dean Howells, an editor of the Atlantic, encouraged her to collect several sketches and connect them with a fictional framework. These became the novel Deephaven (1877). Outstanding collections of stories and sketches followed: Old Friends and New (1879), Country By-ways (1881), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), and A Native of Winby and Other Tales (1893). At intervals Jewett wrote successful books for children, including Play Days (1878), The Story of the Normans (1887), and Betty Leicester (1890). Her novels included A Country Doctor (1884), A Marsh Island (1885), and the book generally considered to be her masterpiece, The Country of Pointed Firs (1896).

Jewett's best fiction portrayed the area surrounding and including the town of her birth and childhood, a home to which she always returned after her wide-ranging travels and where she died on June 24, 1909. "My local attachments," she wrote, "are stronger than any cat's that ever mewed." In the state of Maine the end of the importance of clipper ships had led to the abandonment of shipyards and wharves. Villages much like South Berwick were almost deserted by the men and by the young of both sexes, leaving as inhabitants mostly older women. Jewett wrote about this dying world and the isolated or the elderly who find deep meanings in local customs and private experiences. She wrote realistically but gently, creating what many critics regard as the best fictional narratives to come out of New England during a period when regional writing flourished there.

Further Reading

Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett was edited by Annie Fields, a close friend (1911), and Sarah Orne Jewett Letters by Richard Cary (1956). There are two illuminating critical studies: Francis Otto Matthiessen, Sarah Orne Jewett (1929), and Richard Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett (1962).

Additional Sources

Blanchard, Paula, Sarah Orne Jewett: her world and her work, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1994.

Keyworth, C. L. (Cynthia L.), Master smart woman: a portrait of Sarah Orne Jewett: based on the film by Jane Morrison in collaboration with Peter Namuth, Unity, Me.: North Country Press, 1988.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett
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(born Sept. 3, 1849, South Berwick, Maine, U.S. — died June 24, 1909, South Berwick) U.S. writer. Concerned to capture the folkways of a vanishing culture, she wrote realistic sketches of aging Maine natives, whose manners, idioms, and pithiness she recorded with pungency and humour. Outstanding among her 20 volumes are Deephaven (1877), A White Heron (1886), and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).

For more information on Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Sarah Orne Jewett
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Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849–1909, American novelist and short-story writer, b. South Berwick, Maine. Her studies of small-town New England life are perceptive, sympathetic, and gently humorous. After contributing to periodicals, she published her first collection of stories and sketches, Deephaven, in 1877. It was followed by such collections as The King of Folly Island (1888) and her masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). Her novels include The Marsh Island (1885) and The Tory Lover (1901); her best-known novel, A Country Doctor (1884), relates the conflicts of a woman physician.

Bibliography

See her letters (ed. by R. Cary, 1956, rev. ed. 1967); biographies by S. Sherman (1989) and P. Blanchard (1994); studies by F. O. Matthiesen (1929, repr. 1965), R. Cary (1962), and J. L. Donovan (1980).

 
Works: Works by Sarah Orne Jewett
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(1849-1909)

1877Deephaven. Jewett's sequence of thirteen sketches concerns two young women who summer in a coastal town that is on the decline. The author's first significant work is notable for its early use of local color, Maine speech, and realistic descriptions of the town and citizens. Although many critics hail the work, including John Greenleaf Whittier, who proclaims, "I know of nothing better in our literature of the kind," it is disdained by other reviewers. The New York Times critic notes, "it is by some mistake, doubtless, that it got in print at all."
1884A Country Doctor. Indirectly commenting on her own relationship with her physician father, Jewett in her first novel tells the story of a New England woman who forgoes marriage to become a doctor.
1885Marsh Island. Jewett's novel treats the relationship between a rich society painter and a New England farmer's daughter.
1886A White Heron and Other Stories. This collection of short stories contains some of Jewett's best work, including the frequently anthologized title story about a young country girl who chooses to secure her bond to nature by choosing not to lead a city ornithologist to the nest of the white heron he is hunting. Another story, "Dulham Ladies," is a humorous story about old women attempting to hide their age under wigs in hopes of improving their social status. Other stories in the collection include "A Marsh Rosemary" and "Farmer Finch."
1888The King of Folly Island and Other People. Jewett's collection treats the bleak New England landscape and the quiet desperation of its inhabitants. The title story, about an isolated, antisocial father and his dying daughter who live on a tiny Maine island, is one of the bleakest of Jewett's stories and one of her closet approximations of literary naturalism.
1890Strangers and Wayfarers. Jewett's collection is weakened by her unsuccessful attempt to reproduce black American and Irish dialects. Stories include "A Winter Courtship," "The Mistress of Sydenham Plantation," and "The Town Poor." She also publishes Tales of New England, a collection of stories Jewett prized from her previous collections.
1893A Native of Winby and Other Tales. This uneven collection mixes slight and sentimental stories with some of Jewett's best, including "The Failure of David Berry" and "The Flight of Betsey Lane."
1895The Life of Nancy. The title story in Jewett's collection treats the first visit to Boston of a country girl and her long confinement as an invalid. Other stories include "All My Sad Captains," "An Only Rose," and "The Guests of Mrs. Timms."
1896The Country of the Pointed Firs. Jewett's masterpiece is this story sequence set in an isolated Maine seaport in decline. Willa Cather, whom Jewett mentored, would later declare that the volume, along with The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn, are the "three American books that have the possibility of a long, long life."
1899The Queen's Twin and Other Stories. The last collection of Jewett's stories published in her lifetime includes the title story, one of her best, about an old widow who lives alone, surrounded by pictures of Queen Victoria.
1901The Tory Lover. Jewett's last major work is a striking departure from her characteristic quiet realism. It is a historical novel set during the American Revolution. Henry James counsels Jewett to return to her "country of the pointed fir," but a fall from a carriage on her fifty-third birthday effectively ends her literary career.

 
Quotes By: Sarah Orne Jewett
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Quotes:

"Wrecked on the lee shore of age."

"It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out."

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper -- whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

"Tact is after all a kind of mind reading."

 
Wikipedia: Sarah Orne Jewett
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Sarah Orne Jewett

Born September 3, 1849(1849-09-03)
South Berwick, Maine, United States
Died June 24, 1909 (aged 59)
South Berwick, Maine, United States
Occupation Novelist and short story writer

Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) was an American novelist and short story writer, best known for her local color works set in or near South Berwick, Maine, on the border of New Hampshire, which in her day was a declining New England seaport.

Contents

Biography

Jewett's family had been residents of New England for many generations.[1] Her father was a doctor, and Jewett often accompanied him on his rounds, becoming acquainted with the sights and sounds of her native land and its people. As treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that developed in early childhood, Jewett was sent on frequent walks and through them also developed a love of nature.[2] In later life, Jewett often visited Boston, where she was acquainted with many of the most influential literary figures of her day; but she always returned to South Berwick, the "Deephaven" of her stories.

Jewett was educated at Miss Olive Rayne's school and then at Berwick Academy, graduating in 1865.[3] She supplemented her education through an extensive family library. Jewett was "never overtly religious," but after she joined the Episcopalian church in 1871, she explored less conventional religious ideas. For example, her friendship with Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons stimulated an interest in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and theologian, who believed that the Divine "was present in innumerable, joined forms — a concept underlying Jewett's belief in individual responsibility."[4]

She published her first important story in the Atlantic Monthly at age 19, and her reputation grew throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Her literary importance arises from her careful, if subdued, vignettes of country life that reflect a contemporary interest in local color rather than plot. Jewett possessed a keen descriptive gift that William Dean Howells called "an uncommon feeling for talk — I hear your people." Jewett's most characteristic works include the novella The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896); A Country Doctor (1884), a novel about a New England girl who rejects marriage to become a doctor; and A White Heron (1886), a collection of short stories. Some of Jewett's poetry was collected in Verses (1916), and she also wrote three children's books. Willa Cather described Jewett as a significant influence on her development as a writer,[5] and "feminist critics have since championed her writing for its rich account of women's lives and voices."[4]

Sarah Orne Jewett House at South Berwick, Maine in c. 1910

Jewett never married; but she established a close friendship with writer Annie Fields (1834-1915) and her husband, publisher James Thomas Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. After the sudden death of James Fields in 1881, Jewett and Annie Fields lived together for the rest of Jewett's life in what was then termed a "Boston marriage." Some modern scholars have speculated that the two were lovers.[6] In any case, "the two women found friendship, humor, and literary encouragement" in one another's company, traveling to Europe together and hosting "American and European literati."[4]

On September 3, 1902, Jewett was injured in a carriage accident that all but ended her writing career. She died three months after being paralyzed by a stroke in 1909. The Georgian home of the Jewett family, built in 1774 overlooking Central Square at South Berwick, is now a National Historic Landmark and Historic New England museum called the Sarah Orne Jewett House. [7]

Selected works

  • Deephaven,[8] James R. Osgood, 1877
  • Play Days,[9] Houghton, Osgood, 1878
  • Old Friends and New,[10] Houghton, Osgood, 1879
  • Country By-Ways,[11] Houghton-Mifflin, 1881
  • A Country Doctor [8], Houghton-Mifflin, 1884
  • The Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore,[12] Houghton-Mifflin, 1884
  • A Marsh Island,[13] Houghton-Mifflin, 1884
  • A White Heron and Other Stories,[14] Houghton-Mifflin, 1886
  • The Story of the Normans, Told Chiefly in Relation to Their Conquest of England,[15] G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1887
  • The King of Folly Island and Other People,[16] Houghton-Mifflin, 1888
  • Tales of New England[17]], Houghton-Mifflin, 1890
  • Betty Leicester: A Story for Girls,[18] Houghton-Mifflin, 1890
  • Strangers and Wayfarers,[19] Houghton-Mifflin, 1890
  • A Native of Winby and Other Tales,[20] Houghton-Mifflin, 1893
  • Betty Leicester's English Christmas: A New Chapter of an Old Story[18]], privately printed for the Bryn Mawr School, 1894
  • The Life of Nancy,[21] Houghton-Mifflin, 1895
  • The Country of the Pointed Firs,[22] Houghton-Mifflin, 1896
  • The Queen's Twin and Other Stories,[23] Houghton-Mifflin, 1899
  • The Tory Lover,[24] Houghton-Mifflin, 1901
  • An Empty Purse: A Christmas Story,[25] privately printed, 1905

References

  1. ^ Her mother's family, the Gilmans, were among the most prominent settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire. Sarah's great-grandfather, James Orne, was descended from the Orne family of Dover, New Hampshire, who were among the first settlers of Dover. The Jewetts had emigrated from Yorkshire to Boston in 1638 and later founded Rowley, Massachusetts. From there they moved on to Portsmouth, New Hampshire just after the Revolutionary War.
  2. ^ For instance, one stroll she found "neighborly with the hop-toads and with a joyful robin who was sitting on a corner of the barn, and I became very intimate with a great poppy which had made every arrangement to bloom as soon as the sun came up." Fields, ed. Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, 45.
  3. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project.
  4. ^ a b c Margaret A. Amstutz, "Jewett, Sarah Orne," American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000.
  5. ^ Oxford Companion to American Literature, 382
  6. ^ A personal GLTB website;Violetbooks; a more cautious appraisal on the website of the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project
  7. ^ Margaret A. Amstutz, "Jewett, Sarah Orne," American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000; Website of Historic New England
  8. ^ a b Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  9. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  10. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  11. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  12. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  13. ^ Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  14. ^ Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  15. ^ Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  16. ^ Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  17. ^ Jewett Texts at www.public.coe.edu
  18. ^ a b Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  19. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  20. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  21. ^ The Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  22. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  23. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  24. ^ Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu
  25. ^ Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project at www.public.coe.edu

Further reading

External links

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Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sarah Orne Jewett".  Read more

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