SEACOAST BOOKS

Visitors to the home of Maine's famous writer Sarah Orne Jewett may not know that she actually lived most of her life next door. This new limited edition booklet is available only in South Berwick. Jewett, for those who have not met her yet, was a superb writer of both poetry and fiction.

This is a booklet of rare, out-of print works by Sarah Orne Jewett -- all written while she lived in the Jewett Eastman House (now the town library) on Portland Street between 1854 and 1887 -- is now available in time for the 150th anniversary of the building this year. Sarah Orne Jewett lived in the Jewett-Eastman House for 33 years, more than half her life, and wrote over 140 works while it was her home. In 1849, when Jewett was born, her family resided with her grandparents in the c. 1774 mansion on the corner of Main and Portland Streets in South Berwick, Maine. Today, we call this the Jewett House. There Captain Theodore F. Jewett had lived since the early 1820s, had raised Sarah's father and uncles, and had become the town's most prominent shipbuilder and merchant. After two sons died in the 1840s, Captain Jewett persuaded Sarah's father, Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett, to practice his medical profession close by. For the doctor's growing family, the Jewetts in 1854 built next door on Portland Street the home that later came to be called the Jewett-Eastman House.

$10
Published in a numbered, limited edition of 100 copies by the Jewett Eastman Memorial (JEM) Committee. The booklet is now available at the library and South Berwick Pharmacy and Sobo Books.

Pictures Courtesy The SOJ Text Project

OUR LINK: To the Jewett House Museum
OUR LINK: Old Berwick Historical Society