Sarah Orne Jewett
Overview
 
Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist and short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 writer, best known for her local color works set in or near South Berwick, Maine
South Berwick, Maine
South Berwick is a town in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 7,220 at the 2010 census. South Berwick is home to Berwick Academy, a private, co-educational university-preparatory day school founded in 1791...

, on the border of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, which in her day was a declining New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 seaport.
Jewett's family had been residents of New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 for many generations.
Her father was a doctor, and Jewett often accompanied him on his rounds, becoming acquainted with the sights and sounds of her native land and its people.
Quotations

The warm sun kissed the earth To consecrate thy birth, And from his close embrace Thy radiant face Sprang into sight, A blossoming delight.

"The Soul of the Sunflower" in Scribner's Magazine, Vol. XXII (October 1881), p. 942

Your patience may have long to wait, Whether in little things or great, But all good luck, you soon will learn, Must come to those who nobly earn. Who hunts the hay-field over Will find the four-leaved clover.

"Perseverance" in St. Nicholas Magazine, Vol. X. (September 1883), p. 840

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Letter to Willa Cather. Quoted in preface to The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories (1925)

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

Ch. 5

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

Ch. 5

"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

Ch. 7

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.

Ch. 7

 
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