Description

Fr anklin Library leather edition of Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed firs and Other Stories," Preface by WILLA CATHER, With Photographs of Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE series, published in 1979. Bound in brown leather, the book has brown moire silk end leaves, hubbed spine, satin book marker, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Sarah Orne Jewett, who lived from 1849--1909, was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her "local color" works set along the southern seacoast of Maine. Her father was a doctor specializing in "obstetrics and diseases of women and children." Jewett often accompanied him on his rounds, becoming acquainted with the sights and sounds of her native land and its people. This volume of 425 pages includes her most famous stories, "The White Heron," where SYLVIA, a young girl of nine years old has come from the city to live with her grandmother in the Maine woods. Sylvia has been living in the country, taking care of the cows and other manual jobs. One evening Sylvia is approached by a hunter, who is in the area looking for birds to shoot and preserve for his collection. The young man is searching for a rare white heron that he is certain nests in the area. He spends the night with Sylvia and her grandmother and offers money to anyone who can help him locate the bird; but Sylvia, who knows the location of the bird, will not reveal its location. The next morning, Sylvia climbs a tree as a bird might, but she has broken free of the world beneath and "becomes" the heron. Sylvia is torn between the money and the man's friendship and the life of the bird---but ultimately chooses to keep the white heron's location a secret. 425 pages. I offer Combined shipping.