The Country of Pointed Firs.

JEWETT, Sarah Orne.

$2,500.00

Item Number: 4217

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1896.

First edition of the author’s masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “For Dr. Bartol from Sarah O. Jewett – 25 December 1896.” In the Blanchard biography of Jewett, Dr. Bartol is listed as a neighbor of Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields in Manchester, Massachusetts. He was an early transcendentalist and Reverend of the West Church from 1837 to 1889 and was originally from Maine and was a Bowdoin classmate of Sarah’s father. In near fine condition. Signed and inscribed first editions are rare.

Willa Cather, ranked The Country of the Pointed Firs along with Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter as the American work of fiction most likely to be acknowledged by posterity as an immortal masterpiece. It memorializes the traditions, manners and dialect of Maine coast natives at the turn of the 20th century. In luminous evocations of their lives, Maine-born Jewett created startlingly real portraits of individual New Englanders, and a warm, humorous, and compassionate vision of New England character.