Jane Elton, orphaned as a young girl, goes to live with her aunt Mrs. Wilson, a selfish and overbearing woman who practices a repressive Calvinism. In their rural New England village, Jane grows up yearning to break free from Mrs. Wilson's tyranny and find her place as a citizen of the evolving American Republic. She is helped by her encounters with characters who embody various shadings of moral, religious, and civic virtue: the affectionate servant Mary Hull, a pious Methodist; Mr. Lloyd, a kind Quaker; Crazy Bet, emotional, sympathetic, but deeply unstable; and Old John, bereaved but wise. Ultimately, A New-England Tale is about the connection between parenting and governing, and the key role women play in shaping a fledgling nation. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Early American Women Writers series offers rare works of fiction by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, each reprinted it its entirety, each with a foreword by General Editor Cathy N. Davidson, who places the novel in a historical and literary perspective. Ranging from serious cautionary tales about moral corruption to amusing and trenchant social satire, these books provide today's reader with a unique window into the earliest American popular fiction and way of life. Written in 1822, A New-England Tale is the first of Catharine Sedgwick's twenty novels in addition to the one hundred short magazine pieces she published in her lifetime. The story of an orphan girl in rural New England and the moral and religious trials she faces as she grows up, this intriguing portrait provides a unique look at the religious and political climate of this crucial period in America's development as a country. Addressing many of the complex religious, political, and philosophical issues of the time, as well as theoretical issues of the woman writer, A New-England Tale is a classic nineteenth-century story of a young woman's moral and material triumphs.

"A New England Tale" by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.