Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 - 1909) was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine. Before publication of The Country of the Pointed Firs, she published the novels A Country Doctor (1884) and A Marsh Island (1885), and nine collections of short stories.

Sarah Way Sherman is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire and author of Sarah Orne Jewett, An American Persephone (UPNE, 1989) and numerous articles on 19th-century women writers.