This beloved short story - a classic coming-of-age tale by the author of The Country of the Pointed Firs is gloriously illustrated with pencil drawings by Maine artist Douglas Alvord. Sylvia, a city girl more at home with animals than with people, has come to the Maine Woods to live with her grandmother. One summer afternoon in the late 1800s, her life is changed forever when she meets an attractive young ornithologist searching for birds to snare, stuff, preserve, and display.

This is a collection of new essays on one of the most important works of New England local colour fiction, The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett. It builds on feminist literary scholarship that affirms the importance and value of Jewett's work, but goes beyond previously published studies by offering an analysis of how race, nationalism, and the literary marketplace shape her narrative. The volume constitutes a major rethinking of Jewett's contribution to American literature, and will be of broad interest to the fields of American literary studies, feminist cultural criticism, and American studies.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.