page_title: Sarah Orne Jewett
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Sarah Orne Jewett / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Black and white portrait of American author Sarah Orne Jewett, reading from a book. Image from Literary Pilgrimages in New England to the Homes of Famous Makers of American Literature... by Edwin M. Bacon. New York: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1902: p. 129
context_page_description: Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism.
context_section_description: At age 19, Jewett published her first important story in the Atlantic Monthly, and her reputation grew throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Her literary importance arises from her careful, if subdued, vignettes of country life that reflect a contemporary interest in local color rather than in plot. Jewett possessed a keen descriptive gift that William Dean Howells called "an uncommon feeling for talk — I hear your people." Jewett made her reputation with the novella The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). A Country Doctor (1884), a novel reflecting her father and her early ambitions for a medical career, and A White Heron (1886), a collection of short stories are among her finest work. Some of Jewett's poetry was collected in Verses (1916), and she also wrote three children's books. Willa Cather described Jewett as a significant influence on her development as a writer, and "feminist critics have since championed her writing for its rich account of women's lives and voices."
caption: Sarah Orne Jewett reading.
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