Front Hall from Deephaven

Sarah Orne Jewett invited notable artists Susan Marcia Oakes Woodbury and her husband Charles Woodbury to create illustrations for the 1893 edition of her first novel, Deephaven (1877). Jewett had used her home as inspiration for the house in the book. The Woodburys visited Jewett’s home and made sketches to prepare for these drawings.

The Woodbury illustration hints at Jewett’s description of the front hall in the novel, “a great door at each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner plum-trees in the garden are seen exchanging bows and gestures.”   — Sarah Orne Jewett (“Shore House,” 1873. Later included in Deephaven, 1877)

Susan Marcia Oakes Woodbury grew up in South Berwick and attended Jewett’s alma mater, Berwick Academy.