Harriet Beecher Stowe with Henry Ward Beecher

While her portrait is not present in Sarah Orne Jewett’s house, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was named by Jewett as an influence, particularly her work The Pearls of Orrs Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine (1861), a story set in a Maine fishing village.

In her preface to the 1893 edition of her novel Deephaven, Jewett wrote, “The first chapters of ‘The Pearl of Orr’s Island’ gave the young author of ‘Deephaven’ to see with new eyes, and to follow eagerly the old shore-paths from one gray, weather-beaten house to another…”

In her marriage to publisher James T. Fields, Annie Fields had encouraged him to consider female authors; Stowe had been among the women writers Annie Fields had promoted.