Though not as well-known as the writers she influenced, Sarah Orne Jewett nevertheless remains one of the most important American novelists of the late nineteenth century. Published in 1884, Jewett’s first novel, A Country Doctor, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a semiautobiographical look at her world. In it, Nan’s struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett’s own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women’s issues of her time. Perhaps even more important, Jewett’s perfect details about wild flowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight, convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed and stamp her writing with her signature style. A contemporary and friend of Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Julia Ward Howe, Sarah Orne Jewett is widely recognized as a pathfinder in American literary history, courageously pursuing a road less traveled that led the way for other women to follow.
A Country Doctor (Bantam Classic)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Though not as well-known as the writers she influenced, Sarah Orne Jewett nevertheless remains one of the most important American novelists of the late nineteenth century.
Published in 1884, Jewett's first novel, A Country Doctor, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a semiautobiographical look at her world. In it, Nan's struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett's own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women's issues of her time. Perhaps even more importantly, Jewett's perfect details about wild flowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed and stamp her writing with her signature style.
Published in 1884, Jewett's first novel, A Country Doctor, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a semiautobiographical look at her world. In it, Nan's struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett's own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women's issues of her time. Perhaps even more importantly, Jewett's perfect details about wild flowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed and stamp her writing with her signature style.
About the Author
A contemporary and friend of Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Julia Ward Howe, Sarah Orne Jewett is widely recognized as a pathfinder in American literary history, courageously pursuing a road less traveled that led the way for other women to follow.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Perspective,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Country Doctor (Bantam Classic) (Mass Market Paperback)
What an enjoyable book! As a 19th century novel,it's slow paced enough to reflect upon the value of one's life and work.The young heroine's plan to study medicine is unaccepted by many people, but Nan is determined. She is lucky to have the backing of her guardian, himself a doctor. His thoughts about and support of her decision are very progressive for the time, and heart-warming. Nan's choice is challenged when she meets an attractive young man. The mores of the time demand that she choose between marriage and a profession. The weight that a profession carried at that time made it more a vocation than simply a job. A person chose seriously, his/her future as her life-long identity and contribution to humanity. This novel was thought producing,and its perspective interesting - I recommend it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspirational,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: A Country Doctor (Bantam Classic) (Mass Market Paperback)
This little book gives us insight into the New England culture of the late 1800's and what it was like to grow up as a girl in a small town. Having lived in recent years in the very town of the authoress, I found it authentic in the characterization of the community she described. She portrayed the simplicity of New England living and their penchant for using words sparingly. The inspiration came from tidbits of philosophy for the development of the strength of character to overcome the expectation for one's role in life in a way that was not confrontational, but realistically the right thing to do. This little book reminds us that character and manners can make life much more pleasureable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A little masterpiece,
By Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Country Doctor (Bantam Classic) (Mass Market Paperback)
In a small Maine town in the 19th Century, a young woman fights her way through a stormy night to her childhood home with her own child in her arms. A few hours later she dies, leaving her little girl in her own mother's care and with strict instructions that her husband's family must not get custody. Instead she names the little town's doctor to be her daughter's guardian, if the grandmother does not live to raise the child to womanhood. The little girl, Anna "Nan" Prince, grows up with one goal in mind: she wants to become a doctor, too. Not only in imitation of the lonely man who comes to love her as his own child, but because she believes this is both what nature has fitted her to do and what God intends as her life's mission.
Nan's unusual choice of vocation naturally meets tests, none of which she finds it difficult to overcome until - as a medical school graduate, a woman in her 20s - she finally decides to visit her father's family. Faced with the life she might have had, that of a wealthy man's heir in a town where she finds both loving relatives and new friends, she finds herself considering what her new-found family very much wants her to do: give up her dream, and become the wife and mother her society expects every woman to become. This is amazingly modern story. It moves at a leisurely pace, but no scene is wasted. Jewett goes out of her way to make sure the reader understands that neither she nor her heroine contests the wisdom of the era, that most women certainly do belong "at home" and will be happiest there. I would assume she meant this to help that reader better accept her presentation of Nan Prince as a normal, lovable, sane and feminine female who just happens to be gifted for the practice of medicine. I found both Nan and her story thoroughly enjoyable. So much has changed since Jewett wrote and published this book - but so much has not, too! --Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of GRANITE ISLAND
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
(learn more)
Miss Prince, George Gerry, Miss Fraley, Aunt Nancy, Captain Parish, Miss Eunice, Mary Parish, John Thacher, Captain Walter, Anna Prince, New England, Martin Dyer, Old Mrs Thacher Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Miss Prince, George Gerry, Miss Fraley, Aunt Nancy, Captain Parish, Miss Eunice, Mary Parish, John Thacher, Captain Walter, Anna Prince, New England, Martin Dyer, Old Mrs Thacher Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
68
books
cite this book:
See all 68 books citing this book
- Unlikely Heroines: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Woman Question (Contributions in Women's Studies) by Ann R. Shapiro on 16 pages
- The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea by Michael Davitt Bell on 10 pages
- Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America by Stephanie P. Browner on 7 pages
- American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences: Styles of Affiliation by Nina Baym on 7 pages
- Between Doctors and Patients: The Changing Balance of Power by Lilian R. Furst on 7 pages
See all 68 books citing this book
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
|
|
