Sarah Orne Jewett House
Library Bookcase
Many of the books in the room’s two cases originally belonged to Sarah’s father, Dr. Theodore Jewett. Dr. Jewett was a person of expansive learning and the wealth of knowledge on the shelves is evidence of this. As a lifelong reader, Sarah would have had available to her volumes of classic poetry, science, philosophy, and history.
Jewett credited her father as an early intellectual and writing mentor. Dr. Jewett encouraged Sarah to read classical literature. Sarah’s mother favored novels, such as those of Jane Austen. Here, volumes such as Arnold’s Rugby School Sermons and Natural Law in the Spiritual World occupy the same shelf as To Have and to Hold, by Mary Johnston, a popular novel of 1900.