Oldtown Folks (American Women Writers) [Paperback]

Dorothy Berkson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1987 | Series: American Women Writers

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Gentle Reader,

It is customary to omit prefaces. I beg you to make an exception in my particular case; I have something I really want to say. I have an object in this book, more than the mere telling of a story, and you can always judge of a book better if you compare it with the author’s object. My object is to interpret to the world the New England life and character in that particular time of its history which may be called the seminal period. I would endeavor to show you New England in its seed-bed, before the hot suns of modern progress had developed its sprouting germs into the great trees of today. – Harriet Beecher Stowe in the character of Horace Holyoke --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 519 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (May 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813512204
• ISBN-13: 978-0813512204
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,975,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Masterpiece, February 28, 2001

By 

Eli M Schotz - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oldtown Folks (Hardcover)

Possibly a greater work of art than Uncle Tom's Cabin, Oldtown Folks gives a penetrating and panornamic view of life in a New England village in the years following the Revolutionary War, and before the coming of the railroad and the steam engine. This book is beautiful, filled with rich insights about people and very humorous. In gives a vivid portrait of the social life and thinking of the people in the era. Stowe wrote the book in an effort to preserve for future generations the life, which she had known growing up as a child and which she saw passing away under the force of industrialization. She succeeded marvelously. This work along with perhaps five or six other novels by Stowe are a neglected national treasure. America would not be the society it is today, if Harriet Beecher Stowe were widely read and discussed. The society which did so at the time this work was written was capable of electing Abraham Lincoln to be President. One can only hope that such a day might come again.