Nan Prince of A Country Doctor is one of these women in the making, having reached a point in life where she must jump to maturity and independence by means of conscious choice. In that respect she is differ-ent from Mrs. Todd and Jewett's other wise old women,whose native strength has been developed over the years as much by outward circumstance as by force of wilt. Nan must take hold of her future and shape it herself. Yet it is not hard to imagine that Nan at sixty will be in all essentials another of Jewett's strong elders,a counselor and. peacemaker in her community. This was not a kind of strength that late-Victorian readers were used to seeing in women characters. More typi-cally, even strong women like Charlotte Bronte's Shir-ley or George Eliot's Maggie had to die or compromise their freedom--dsually by marriage--in the end...

Though not as well-known as the writers she influenced, Sarah Orne Jewett nevertheless remains one of the most important American novelists of the late nineteenth century, Published in 1884, Jewett"s first novel, A Country Doctor, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a semiautobiographical look at her world. In it, Nan"s struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett"s own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women"s issues of her time, Perhaps even more important, Jewett"s perfect details about wild flowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed and stamp her writing with her signature style, A contemporary and friend of Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Julia Ward Howe, Sarah Orne Jewett is widely recognized as a pathfinder in American literary history, courageously pursuing a road less traveled that led the way for other women to follow.

Introduction
The Last Mile
The Farm-House Kitchen
At Jake and Martin"s
Life and Death
A Sunday Visit
In Summer Weather
For the Years to Come
A Great Change
At Dr. Leslie"s
Across the Street
New Outlooks
Against the Wind
A Straight Course
Miss Prince of Dunport
Hostess and Guest
A June Sunday
By the River
A Serious Tea-Drinking
Friend and Lover
Ashore and Afloat
At Home Again
Selected Bibliography