Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Country of the Pointed Firs
    Unavailable
    The Country of the Pointed Firs
    Unavailable
    The Country of the Pointed Firs
    Ebook164 pages2 hours

    The Country of the Pointed Firs

    By Sarah Orne Jewett

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    In scene after memorable scene of Sarah Orne Jewett's fictional masterpiece, The Country of Pointed Firs, the Maine-born author recorded what she felt were the rapidly disappearing traditions, manners, and dialect of Maine coast natives at the turn of the twentieth century. In luminous evocations of their lives — a happy family reunion, an old seaman's ghostly vision, a disappointed lover's self-imposed exile, and more — Jewett created startlingly real portraits of individual New Englanders and a warm, humorous, and compassionate vision of the New England character.
    No less a writer than Willa Cather ranked The Country of the Pointed Firs — with Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — as one of the three American works most likely to achieve permanent recognition. Long overlooked, Sarah Orne Jewett is today widely acknowledged as an American master and The Country of the Pointed Firs as a landmark in the defining of American character and the American experience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateSep 26, 2012
    ISBN9780486110677
    Author

    Sarah Orne Jewett

    Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was a prolific American author and poet from South Berwick, Maine. First published at the age of nineteen, Jewett started her career early, combining her love of nature with her literary talent. Known for vividly depicting coastal Maine settings, Jewett was a major figure in the American literary regionalism genre. Though she never married, Jewett lived and traveled with fellow writer Annie Adams Fields, who supported her in her literary endeavors.

    Read more from Sarah Orne Jewett

    Related to The Country of the Pointed Firs

    Titles in the series (60)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Requiem for a Reader

      Jul 28, 2017

      My first memory of my father as a reader was him telling me to hurry up; it was almost time to silflay. The post Requiem for a Reader appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Hopeful Expressions for a New Year

      Nov 23, 2021

      It wasn’t until a few months ago that I decided to tackle the fast-approaching New Year from a different angle: being kinder to myself. Recently, I compiled a vision board with multiple words and phrases that serve as my goals. It was worthwhile flip

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Volcano That Shrouded the Earth and Gave Birth to a Monster

      Oct 5, 2017

      Two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815. After perhaps 1,000 years’ dormancy, the devastating

      18 min read

    • Article

      Steeped in Tradition

      Mar 21, 2023

      Steeped in Tradition
      5 min read

    • Article

      New Chapters Unfolding

      Nov 22, 2022

      When first I saw the vast English house that would become my home, I was overawed. An elegant redbrick Victorian vicarage in Oxford, tucked away next to a lake, with a rambling garden and an ancient willow. We toured the property as part of my husban

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Wandering Mind

      Jan 13, 2022

      A Wandering Mind
      5 min read

    • Article

      Florida Man

      Dec 1, 2023

      Florida Man
      17 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Apr 24, 2024

      1) What is the name of the village in which Miss Marple lives? 2) Who was England’s first Queen Regnant? 3) Which river runs through the city of Bath? 4) Marsh and hen are both species of which bird of prey? 5) What is the name for the final position

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The Garden

      Oct 4, 2023

      The Call Of The Garden
      5 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Feb 14, 2024

      1) What would one measure using a pluviometer? 2) Which English Prime Minister had the first names William Ewart? 3) What institution is known as the ‘old lady of Threadneedle Street’? 4) ‘Fill-dike’ is a rural name for which month? 5) What are Rum,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jan 28, 2022

      Time Out
      3 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jan 28, 2022

      Time Out
      3 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Jan 17, 2024

      1) What type of bean is used to make Baked Beans? 2) For whom was the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, East Sussex, built? 3) How many months of the year consist of 31 days? 4) Where would gaiters be worn? 5) Which bird lends its name to the act of compla

      4 min read

    • Article

      Your Page

      Mar 30, 2022

      Like coming to an oasis in the desert – that is how I would describe coming home from the busyness of the shops and making a coffee, then finding an armchair to settle in for the first tantalising browse through my favourite magazine. Leisa Rossignol

      2 min read

    • Article

      Sensory Fieldwork

      Sep 19, 2019

      Sensory Fieldwork
      6 min read

    • Article

      Page Turner

      Sep 19, 2019

      Page Turner
      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2022

      Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt. -Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. -William Blake, T

      4 min read

    • Article

      Texas Variety

      May 8, 2019

      Texas Variety
      7 min read

    Reviews for The Country of the Pointed Firs

    4/5

    151 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Jewett’s novel The Country of the Pointed Firs is the culmination of the regional characters, themes, and techniques that Jewett explored for so many years. It is a composite novel organized around alternating currents of separation and reunion, Jewett never wrote a conventionally-plotted novel, and in this tale a visiting writer-narrator from the city is slowly changed from an outsider into an initiated insider in the life of the largely female community of Dunnet Landing, a tiny seacoast village in Maine. The first chapter, titled “Return”, represents a reunion of sorts in that the narrator is returning to a place with which she previously fell in love. After that very short opening she is quickly drawn into the world of her landlady, Mrs. Almira Todd, the local herbalist who seems to possess a special spiritual outlook.Soon the narrator feels the need to separate so that she can complete the writing project she brought with her. After listening to a strange tale about a limbo-like “waiting place” between this world and the next in the fog-bound arctic regions, the narrator reunites with Mrs. Todd, and they both discover that their relationship has improved in mutual consideration and empathy as a result of the separation. They have achieved a balance between the basic human needs for both connection and separation. This alternating pattern of separation and reunion continues in a number of different ways throughout the novel, ending with the narrator’s departure from Dunnet Landing.Dunnet Landing and the surrounding country is populated with charming characters whose stories fill the spaces between the description of the lovely Maine north country. One of those characters, Captain Littlepage, had time for both sailing and reading. The latter activity was evidently also a pastime of the narrator who dotted the narrative with references to Shakespeare, Milton, and others. The scenery is captured in moments like this:"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."(p. 33)The chill in the air on winter nights was tempered by the heat from a Franklin Stove (no doubt very much like the one in my sister's home in the high country of northeastern Nevada). One of the best moments in the story was the Bowden family reunion that brought together many of the people from the area in a way that you can only experience in small out of the way communities like Dunnet Landing.The Country of the Pointed Firs was greeted with strongly positive reviews. Indeed, a few years later, Jewett's friend Willa Cather would rate it as one of the three great classics of American literature (the other two being The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I'm not sure I agree completely with Cather, but this is a fine short novel depicting late nineteenth century Americana.
    • 5/5
      I highly recommend this edition. Although I also have the Library of America edition of Jewett, this volume is a wonderful accessory simply for the eight-page introduction by the late Mary Ellen Chase, herself a highly regarded novelist and for many years a professor and eventually department chair in English at Smith College. As a young girl, Chase met Jewett, who was the principal influence on Chase's own fiction, and Chase is the "bridge" between Jewett and Carolyn Chute among Maine fiction writers.NOTE: In case it is unclear, the "edition" to which I refer is the 1968 edition "selected and introduced" by Mary Ellen Chase and published in hardcover by W.W. Norton (but not a Norton Critical Edition).
    • 3/5
      I picked up this book after reading Cranford, and if you enjoy one, I think you will enjoy the other.

      This one takes you through a months-long summer visit to a small seaside town in Maine during the 19th century. It is about as eventful as a summer vacation normally would be, there is no great suspense or dramatic action. The narrator is the author, a woman writer boarding with a local herbalist (and renting the small schoolhouse as an office). Visits, meals, walks, and boat trips make up most of the narrative. There is a lot of vivid detail, and if you are going to love this book, that is likely to be what you will love: being taken back in time for a good close look around a quiet traditional village community. No-one is rich, and most of the characters are women, most of them self-sufficient and highly competent in relationships, work, and boating. The significant male characters are misfits: a very shy but sweet old man living with his mother; a retired ship's captain possessed by visions of a surreal Arctic journey that may or may not have taken place; a widowed fisherman who has never gotten over the death of his adored wife.

      It is a slow paced book, and I wanted to pick up a pencil and edit her in places, but it was worth my time, and many of the images and stories have been lingering in my mind.
    • 5/5
      This is basically my favorite book of all times. I might be biased because I am maybe a little bit in love with SOJ? Something I like to think about a lot is whether someone could write a book like this nowadays. I know that I could not. You would probably have to be a very good person.
    • 5/5
      Coastal Maine is a glorious scenic area, and Jewett conveys the awareness of peace and sense of place wonderfully well through the voice of the unnamed narrator who spends an enchanted summer in the fictional village of Dunnet Landing. She was a writer who found plentiful material in the sights, sounds, and smells of the seaside and the hardy people who called it home.Almira Todd, the landlady with a kind soul and homespun wisdom, is at the heart of the book. She integrates the urban writer into her tightly knit community and the surrounding islands so seamlessly that she was easily accepted as one of them. She recognizes a kindred spirit and befriends her summer visitor. ?I do not know what herb of the night it was that used sometimes to send out a penetrating odor late in the evening, after the dew had fallen, and the moon was high, and the cool air came up from the sea. Then Mrs. Todd would feel that she must talk to somebody, and I was only too glad to listen. We both fell under the spell?? (Pg. 6).Although there is no real plot to this book, the descriptions of the land and its people were captivating. No wonder Willa Cather refers to this as one of ?three American books which have the possibility of a long, long life.? (Pg. 235). Recommended to those who like quiet, introspective books with beautiful word sketches of nature and people.
    • 2/5
      this has been on my to-read list for years, and i finally picked it up this fall. i've only just read the main novella; i'd really like to read the stories after it, but i'm just not in a place to do that with any reasonable speed right now. i really wanted to be absorbed by this more than i was, and maybe i will be some other time - it wasn't as plot driven as the stuff i've been reading lately, and i had to force myself to get chapters done here and there. maybe next time!
    • 5/5
      Sarah Orne Jewett’s THE COUNTRY OF POINTED FIRS is a visitor’s tale. Set in the fictional Maine coast town of Dunnet Landing where the author/narrator has settled for the summer to write. As a visitor, the narrator inevitably recounts only the pieces of history she comes in contact with through her landlady and the people she meets in the community. The stories are portraits, bits and pieces, of lives that exist outside the narrator’s brief visit. As a result, the reader feels like a companion on this holiday. The novella moves at the pace of a quiet seacoast village, and is refreshing to read for that very reason. Like a vacation, outside cares fade while focusing on the lives, habits and landscape of this place. The writing is finely wrought. A real affection for a place and people one knows briefly shines through the work and makes one wish for a time and place when travel, life and writing unfolded at a the speed of a long walk.Some editions incorporate other stories written about Dunnet Landing into the body of the novella. This can lead to a change in the narrator’s voice that is incongruous with the rest of the work. Look for a version that preserves the order of one of the early publications with other short works in a separate section.
    • 1/5
      If you like insipid family yarns and the nattering of old women, if you're charmed by homespun wisdom and wowed by ordinary rural New England folk saying (rarely doing) ordinary rural New England things, and if you like literature to be a gentle balm, a comforter, a restorative herbal tea naturally sweetened with honey, served lukewarm so that you barely notice it while imbibing, then you will probably like this book. I loathed it.
    • 5/5
      Story told by a self-effacing first-person narrator who resides with an older woman, a Maine herbalist, for the summer. Her hostess is sturdy native who introduces the (nameless) narrator to a cast of seafaring folk who belong to an earlier, stronger generation. Set in late nineteenth century.Such a wonderful book, and sad yet full of light, with a host of strong, salty, companionable women sketched in these few pages. There's a deep, deep nostalgia saturating the work. The narrator does not want to look toward the future (the twentieth century). She keeps her eye pinned, instead, on the residents of a seaside, Maine village, many of them old, most childless. Her hostess is an herbalist ... a classic figure, slightly witchy, frank, healthy, and an accomplished sailer. The story of the self-exiled woman on Shell-Heap Island is key. Women's friendship ... and women's isolation.
    • 5/5
      Characters that equal Mark Twain's. One of the first books that I ever read while on Monhegan Island, and, while it is not specifically about Monhegan, I will always associate this book with my time there (hence the Monhegan Island tag).When I return to Monhegan Island each year, the feeling I have is captured perfectly in Sarah's words of "But the first salt wind from the east, the first sight of a lighthouse set boldly on its outer rock, the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of seaward-bound firs on an island, made me feel solid and definite again, instead of a poor, incoherent being. Life had resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to happiness."