Psalms.
INSCRIBED
(Jewett, Sarah Orne.) Waddell, P. Hately, L.L.D. The Psalms: Frae Hebrew Intil Scottis. Edinburgh…: J. Menzies & Co., 1871.
Square 8vo.; yellow endpapers; hinges fragile; brown cloth; stamped in gilt and blind; sunned at edges and spine; minor loss to top and bottom of spine. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition, of this collection of psalms; with three engravings throughout the text, and a poem titled “David and Goliath” at the rear. An association copy, inscribed on the front endpaper by Jewett: Rev. George Lewis/Most kind regards from/Sarah O. Jewett/September 1877. Dr. George Lewis was pastor of the First Parish Church in South Berwick, Maine. He read the services at S. O. Jewett's memorial service.
Inscribed and presented to Lewis the same year Deephaven was published – a book of sketches loosely based on the towns of York and Wells, near Jewett’s hometown of South Berwick – is evidence of Jewett’s Maine ancestry and her connection to her roots. Her biographer notes that by the mid-1870s especially, “Berwick had become the place where she could write in peace, a place to be continually savored and rediscovered, an inexhaustible source for her her art. ‘I think Berwick is new to me every year,’ she wrote in 1876, and that sense of being an explorer in her own territory, would, if anything, increase over the years” (Blanchard, Paula. Sarah Orne Jewett. Her World and Her Work. Radcliffe Biography Series. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994; 115). This inscribed book links Jewett to her hometown, and to a person who would reaffirm that connection at the end of her life.
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