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Contents Old Friends and New Illustrations associated with the unauthorized edition. ... Little Jimmy
Stories attributed to Sarah Orne Jewett
in an unauthorized edition of Old Friends and New Introduction by Graham Frater In American Literature in Nineteenth Century England
This may indicate that one of Jewett's books was pirated in the UK: Old Friends and New of 1879 was published in an undated edition by William Nicholson and Sons of Paternoster Square, London and attributed to S. O. Jewitt (sic); it contains the first four stories in Houghton Osgood's Boston edition, but none of the others.
It also contains two stories that are listed nowhere else, "A Brave Boy" and "Little Jimmy"; Jacob Blanck believes these to be of "doubtful origin" ( A Bibliography of American Literature , vol. 5., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969, p.201). Despite its sturdy covers and use of gilt, it is a careless or hasty example of book production which may strengthen the suggestion of pirating. My copy of the Nicholson edition shows the author's name misspelt and that the hero of a "A Brave Boy" has his name spelt inconsistently; illustrations and page numbers do not always correspond either.
I believe that Blanck is likely to be right and that "A Brave Boy" is probably not a Jewett text. It does display the interest in technical detail that Kipling admired in Jewett and its setting is a lumber district which might be in New England, but little else seems to correspond. Surface factors that immediately appear untypical of Jewett include the use of what seems to be a male narrator, the unusually short paragraphs and the lack of reflective description. | |
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