Author Jewett Sarah Orne

cation through an extensive family library. Jewett was "never overtly religious," but after she joined the Episcopalian church in 1871, she explored less conventional religious ideas. For example, her friendship with Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons stimulated an interest in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and theologian, who believed that the Divine "was present in innumerable, joined forms — a concept underlying Jewett's belief in individual responsibility."[5] She published her first important story in the Atlantic Monthly at age 19, and her reputation grew throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Her literary importance arises from her careful, if subdued, vignettes of country life that reflect a contemporary interest in local color rather than plot. Jewett possessed a keen descriptive gift that William Dean Howells called "an uncommon feeling for talk — I hear your people." Jewett made her reputation with the novella The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).[6] A Country Doctor (1884), a novel reflecting her father and her early ambitions for a medical career, and A White Heron (1886), a collection of short stories are among her finest work.[7] Some of Jewett's poetry was collected in Verses (1916), and she also wrote three children's books. Willa Cather described Jewett as a significant influence on her development as a writer,[8] and "feminist critics have since championed her writing for its rich account of women's lives and voices."[5] Jewett never married; but she established a close friendship with writer Annie Fields (1834-1915) and her husband, publisher James Thomas Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. After the sudden death of James Fields in 1881, Jewett and Annie Fields lived together for the rest of Jewett's life in what was then termed a "Boston marriage." Some modern scholars have speculated that the two were lovers.[9] In any case, "the two women found friendship, humor, and literary encouragement" in one another's company, traveling to Europe together and hosting "American and European literati."[5] On September 3, 1902, Jewett was injured in a carriage accident that all but ended her writing career. She died three months after being paralyzed by a stroke in 1909. The Georgian home of the Jewett family, built in 1774 overlooking Central Square at South Berwick, is now a National Historic Landmark and Historic New England museum called the Sarah Orne Jewett House. [10]