Lady Ferry by Sarah Orne Jewett

# Back in Maine, the old house is haunted? Or is it? It depends what you think of as a ghost…

A classic story by a Victorian woman author from New England.

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So back to Sarah Orne Jewett. She lived her life on the southern coast of Maine in New England. She was born in 1849 in South Berwick and died in 1909 aged only 59 in the same year. She wrote a few collections of short stories, the most famous of which is The Country of Pointed Firs and you can get all of her work for free via the marvellous Project Gutenburg.

Her family were Mainers going a long way back. The family home was built in 1774. Her father was a doctor who specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology. Her mother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis so the young Sarah spent many hours walking in the local countryside. She often visited Boston but her stories feature the small towns she was familiar with, even when she disguises their names.

She had an interested in the Swedish mystic Swedenborg and she believed, apparently in Divine immanence: that god is in all things, though she was a firm believer in individual responsibility, which I always imagine as being a big thing in New England.

I am struck by how different her New England is to that of Lovecraft of even of Russell Kirk whose Behind The Stumps we read out ages ago. I must do more of his stuff. I must do more of lots of people’s stuff: there are outstanding calls for more Poe, which I will get to.

Sarah Orne Jewett published her first story aged only 19 and her reputation grew in the 1870s and 1890s. People commented that her stories were driven by a focus on local colour more than plot, but I think Lady Ferry has an interesting, if gentle plot.

She never married a man but had a close friendship with a married woman and the woman’s husband and when the husband, a publisher died, the two women moved in together. Of course this was a time when certain types of love were not allowed to speak their name.

They travelled together through America and Europe until in 1902 she had a carriage accident which ended her writing career. This was compounded when she had a stroke in March 1909 and she died soon after.

Notes on My Accent## Get All Episodes Ad Free!
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Yes, I decided it had to be done American. I watched Youtube videos on the east coast Maine accent and its lack of rhoticity. I attempt to do that with the servants voice, but the problem is me missing off American rs just sounds like I’m lapsing into British English. Fire is fiurr or fiah. It needs work, but I hope my attempts didn’t detract too much from the story.