Sarah Orne Jewett is best known as the author of The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), a loosely structured novel that is considered by many to be the finest example of regional literature published in the nineteenth century. Jewett's reputation rests securely on this work, but during the course of her writing career she also wrote four other novels, nine collections of stories and sketches about village life in New England, a history of the Normans, and three books for children. Like other writers of the local-color school, she faithfully recorded the life of rural folk whose culture and idioms were threatened by a more urban and homogenized culture. As a regionalist, Jewett will be remembered most for her depiction of New England settings, those dying coastal villages and up-country farms, the woods and shores of southeastern Maine; her nostalgia for the grand but departed past of her...