Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World And Her Work (Radcliffe Biography Series) [Paperback]

Paula Blanchard (Author)

Book Description

Series: Radcliffe Biography Series | Publication Date: September 13, 2002

Best known for her masterpiece, The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) is a writer with enormous resonance for our time. Our fascination with place, with traditional values, and our yearning for a rural utopia all find fulfillment in Jewett's portrayal of the "grand and simple lives" of coastal Maine. In this delicious portrait, Paula Blanchard (biographer of Margaret Fuller and Emily Carr) plunges us into New England literary life in turn-of-the-century Boston, into the circles of Henry James, Lowell, Howell, Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. She delves into Jewett's close friendships with women, from the young Willa Cather and the flamboyant "Mrs. Jack" Gardner, and especially to Annie Fields, her partner in a sustaining "Boston marriage." Her enthralling and insightful glimpses into Jewett's fiction will send readers racing back to a writer of whose work Kipling said "it is the very life."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blanchard ( The Life of Emily Carr ) views Jewett (1849-1909) from within a feminist framework in this well-written and objective study. A native of South Berwick, Maine, Jewett drew on the people she grew up with to create the characters for her stories and novels, which were set in the rural landscape she always called home. Blanchard argues that although Jewett became renowned as a "regional" writer, her skillful portrayals of women's lives and the important case she made in her fiction (e.g., A Country Doctor ) for their careers has been overlooked by male literary critics, who tend to patronize her. Jewett herself developed strong attachments to women, and spent much of the time she was not in Maine living in Boston with her close friend Annie Fields, a celebrated hostess to brilliant writers of the day--Dickens, Emerson, Hawthorne. This absorbing biography details Jewett and Fields's travels together and their circle of friends (writers John Greenleaf Whittier, Celia Thaxter, Henry James, Willa Cather).
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Blanchard (Margaret Fuller, Addison-Wesley, 1987) has given us a distinguished biography of American novelist Jewett, best known for The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). She gives ample reasons for the recent resurgence of interest in Jewett, especially among modern feminist critics, spurred by the strength of Jewett's female characters, her inimitable portraits of 19th-century New England, and her confident reassertion of traditional values and optimism in the face of hardships and defeat. Blanchard tells a story rather than simply recounting the facts. Her research into the diaries and letters of Jewett and her associates, her knowledge of the literary criticism of Jewett's works, and her own insightful critical comments on Jewett's novels, sketches, and short stories make this an eminently informative work, especially for readers attracted to 19th-century American cultural history and the formation of its women writers.
Marie L. Lally, Alabama Sch. of Mathematics & Science, Mobile
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738208329
• ISBN-13: 978-0738208329
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.