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The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

Paperback
$15.00 US
5.1"W x 7.8"H x 0.55"D   | 8 oz | 64 per carton
On sale May 01, 1996 | 304 Pages | 9780140434767
The masterpiece that established Sarah Orne Jewett among the consummate stylists of nineteenth-century American fiction

Composed in a series of beautiful web-like sketches, the novel is narrated by a young woman writer who leaves the city to work one summer in the Maine seaport of Dunnet Landing, and stays with the herbalist Mrs. Almira Todd. She writes a New England idyll rooted in friendship, particularly female friendship, weaving stories and conversations, imagery of sea, sky and earth, the tang of salt air and aromatic herbs into an organic "fiction of community" in which themes and form are exquisitely matched. To quote Willa Cather: "The 'Pointed Fir' sketches are living things caught in the open, with light and freedom and air spaces about them. They melt into the land and the life of the land until they are not stories at all, but life itself."

This edition, introduced by Alison Easton, also includes ten of Sarah Orne Jewett's short stories, among them "The Queen's Twin," "The Foreigner" and "William's Wedding," set in Dunnet Landing.

"Immense—it is the very life."
—Rudyard Kipling
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) was a novelist, short story writer, and poet. As a young child she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was encouraged to take frequent walks, falling in love with nature as a result. At nineteen, Jewett had a short story published in The Atlantic; her reputation grew with the publication of her novels A Country Doctor and The Country of the Pointed Firs. For most of her adult life, Jewett lived with her close friend, Annie Adams Field, in what was then termed a “Boston marriage.” Jewett died in 1909. View titles by Sarah Orne Jewett

About

The masterpiece that established Sarah Orne Jewett among the consummate stylists of nineteenth-century American fiction

Composed in a series of beautiful web-like sketches, the novel is narrated by a young woman writer who leaves the city to work one summer in the Maine seaport of Dunnet Landing, and stays with the herbalist Mrs. Almira Todd. She writes a New England idyll rooted in friendship, particularly female friendship, weaving stories and conversations, imagery of sea, sky and earth, the tang of salt air and aromatic herbs into an organic "fiction of community" in which themes and form are exquisitely matched. To quote Willa Cather: "The 'Pointed Fir' sketches are living things caught in the open, with light and freedom and air spaces about them. They melt into the land and the life of the land until they are not stories at all, but life itself."

This edition, introduced by Alison Easton, also includes ten of Sarah Orne Jewett's short stories, among them "The Queen's Twin," "The Foreigner" and "William's Wedding," set in Dunnet Landing.

Praise

"Immense—it is the very life."
—Rudyard Kipling

Author

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) was a novelist, short story writer, and poet. As a young child she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was encouraged to take frequent walks, falling in love with nature as a result. At nineteen, Jewett had a short story published in The Atlantic; her reputation grew with the publication of her novels A Country Doctor and The Country of the Pointed Firs. For most of her adult life, Jewett lived with her close friend, Annie Adams Field, in what was then termed a “Boston marriage.” Jewett died in 1909. View titles by Sarah Orne Jewett