Featuring a new Afterword by Balaam, this collection contains the novel The Country of Pointed Firs and several stories in which Jewett explores the world of the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous towns along Maine's coast. Revised reissue.

This collection of stories is based on the personal experiences of Sarah Jewett as she grew up in rural Maine and traveled with her doctor father. The closely-knit sketches of a small fishing village in Maine seaport town in the 1890's are narrated by a summer resident. In the title story first published in 1886, a writer retreats to spend a quiet summer in a remote seaport, where she discovers a strong and cohesive community even as the town faces economic decline

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.

Sarah Orne Jewett, who wrote the book when she was 47, was largely responsible for popularizing the regionalism genre with her sketches of the fictional Maine fishing village of Dunnet Landing. Like Jewett, the narrator is a woman, a writer, unattached, genteel in demeanor, intermittently feisty and zealously protective of her time to write. The narrator removes herself from her landlady's company and writes in an empty schoolhouse, but she also continues to spend a great deal of time with Mrs. Todd, befriending her hostess and her hostess's family and friends.