Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877

JEWETT, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). Deephaven. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. [With:] The King of Folly Island and Other People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888.

Very fine copy of the author's first book: influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe and influential for Willa Cather; plus a signed presentation copy. The fictional town of Deephaven was inspired by Jewett's hometown of South Berwick, Maine. "Stimulated by Harriet Beecher Stowe's sympathetic depiction of her state's local color, [Jewett] was determined to follow her in recording the life of the dwindling farms and deserted shipless harbors ... [her] precise, charmingly subdued vignettes of the gently perishing glory of the Maine countryside and ports have won her a place among the most important writers of the local-color school, and she was a significant influence on the writing of Willa Cather" (OCAL). The King of Folly Island is inscribed and signed by the author on the front free endpaper: "To Eva von Blomberg with dear love from Sarah O. Jewett / South Berwick, September 1888." Baroness Eva von Blomberg was a cousin of the Kaiser who taught German in Boston for many years. BAL 10871; BAL 10890.

Deephaven: 12mo (148 x 107mm). Title printed in red and black. Original pictorial terra-cotta cloth, stamped in gilt and black (hint of wear to extremities and hinges); modern clamshell box.
Folly Island: 12mo (176 x 110mm). Original two-tone green cloth, stamped in black, spine gilt-lettered (spine rubbed with loss to imprint, tips rubbed, couple of paper-clip stains to endpaper). Provenance: Eva von Blomberg, d.1937 (authorial inscription).