Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work

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). (Sept.)