Sarah Orne Jewett

Jewett (1849-1909) drew heavily on the New Englanders she encountered growing up in South Berwick, Maine, to populate her well-crafted short stories ( The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1896) and character sketches ( Deep haven , 1877), which were suffused by her profound love of 19th-century rural life. Silverthorne ( Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ) presents a thoroughly researched picture of Jewett's privileged upbringing (her father was a doctor) and her adult life as a well-traveled and cosmopolitan writer who divided her time between Maine and Boston, where she lived with Annie Fields, whose literary salons were attended by such writers as James Russell Lowell, Matthew Arnold and John Greenleaf Whittier. Although Silverthorne acknowledges Fields's and Jewett's deep regard for one another, she feels that there is not enough evidence to establish whether theirs was a sexual relationship. This competent analysis of Jewett's work is marred by occasionally stilted writing. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)