Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World And Her Work

by Paula Blanchard

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."

Genres: Biography

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Meghan C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of SOJ rejoice! ​​What a treat this book is. After reading ​​Country of the Pointed Firs​​ again this spring, and after visiting Jewett's family home in Berwick, ME over the summer, I came to this biography primed and eager to know more.​ Blanchard did not disappoint.

Thorough without feeling laborious, Blanchard quickly establishes herself as a talented writer in her own right, a gift she shares with SOJ and perhaps gives her a special insight into understanding what details are true factors to an author's creative progress and process.​ From Jewett's birth to death, this account feels comprehensive and complete, and Blanchard has the creative ingenuity to use the linear timeline of Jewett's life as a mere guideline as opposed to a rigid structural requirement. Treating each chapter as a theme and jumping around in time to highlight how certain events directly impacted others later down the road is fresh and cleverly done.

​The tone is pitch-perfect, just the kind of voice I trust. Blanchard has clear affection for Jewett without being blinded to the author's flaws. She is appropriately praiseworthy without being reverential, and critical when need be without derision.

​I also appreciated the literary theory Blanchard has peppered through out (hers and others') and although I didn't completely agree with Blanchard's interpretation of CoPF I nevertheless found her treatment of the text fascinating​​​. There's nothing that gets me jazzed up quite likely hearing people's interpretations of fiction. It's just the best​.

And as an added bonus, after reading this book I walked away with a list of other authors and books I now want to hunt down. Reading begets more reading! Life is good. (Note to self: look up Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden for next spring.)

[Duane Houghton · Rating 4 out of 5]

My office just so happens to be in her childhood home, so i thought i ought to give this one a read. A great look into the life of the author.

[Joanna Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good biography. Very sympathetic to Sara Orne Jewett. Also a great book to launch more study because so many of her contemporaries are very interesting.

[Darcey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars,