The Country of the Pointed Firs, and Other Stories - Softcover

Jewett, Sarah Orne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393311376 ISBN 13: 9780393311372

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982

Synopsis

In prose of exquisite simplicity, Jewett draws a resonant portrait of people creating and tending bonds of relationship in a landscape buffeted by the forces of isolation as well as nature's severity.

This edition of The Country of the Pointed Firs makes the American classic available in the form in which it was originally published in 1896. An edition published after the author's death had incorporated three "Dunnett Landing" stories into the novel as additional chapters; these stories appear here in a separate section, along with a fourth story belonging to this group and four more tales. The four Dunnett Landing stories are "A Dunnett Shepherdess," "The Foreigner," "The Queen's Twin," and "William's Wedding"; the four additional tales are "A White Heron," "Miss Tempy's Watchers," "Martha's Lady," and "Aunt Cynthy Dallett." Here in the fictional town of Dunnett's Landing on the coast of Maine, Sarah Orne Jewett introduces people―now mostly women, as many of the town's men have been lost at sea or moved away in this era of whaling's decline―who have lived next to the sea for generations and seem to share its strength, silence and mystery.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Sarah Orne Jewett's place in American letters was assured when this acclaimed collection of stories about her native state of Maine was first published in 1896. Her crisp style and skillful observation of people and places gives her work lasting appeal.

From the Back Cover:

The Country of the Pointer Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett's masterpiece, established her 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 unfolds 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 historically significant 'fiction of community' in which themes and form are exquisitely matched. 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'.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0393311376
• ISBN 13: 9780393311372
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 332