Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
No wonder that your son comes into the room with a confused expression of uncomfortable pain on every feature, when he does not in the least know whether he will be recognized as a gentleman, or overlooked as a little boy. No wonder he sits down in his chair with movements suggestive of nothing but rheumatism and jack-knives, when he is thinking that perhaps there may be some reason why he should not take that particular chair, and that, if there is, he will be ordered up. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
From that day Nat was a changed boy. He would not go to school in the afternoons, but spent the hours from two till five in drawing. I had a cord arranged from our room to Miss Penstock's, so that he could call her if at any moment he needed help, and she was only too glad to have him in the house. When I reached home at six, I always found him lying back in his chair with his work spread out before him, and such a look of content and joy on his face, that more than once it made me cry instead of speaking when I bent over to kiss him. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
Stephen made no reply. It had just dawned on his consciousness that he had been blundering frightfully, and his mind stood still for a moment, as a man halts suddenly, when he finds himself in a totally wrong road. To turn short about is not always the best way of getting off a wrong road, though it may be the quickest way. Stephen turned short about, and exclaimed with a forced laugh, "Well, mother, I don't suppose it will make any great difference to you, if she doesn't. It is not a matter of any moment, anyhow, whether we see any thing of either of them or not. I thought she seemed a bright, cheery sort of body, that's all. Good-by," and he ran out of the house. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Reading
Being a member of The Juaneno Band of Mission Indians in San Juan Capistrano, Ca. This book has given me a great bit of understanding into how our people were treated and how thislady dedicated the last years of her life to helping the mission indians in California.I'm a new fan of Mrs.Jackson's writings. ... Read more

Book Description
Novelist, travel writer, and essayist Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was one of the most successful authors and most passionate intellects of her day. Ralph Waldo Emerson also regarded her as one of America's greatest poets. Today Jackson is best remembered for Ramona, a romantic novel set in the rural Southern Californian Indian and Californio communities of her day. Ramona, continuously in print for over a century, has become a cultural icon, but Jackson's prolific career left us with much more, notably her achievements as a prose writer and her work as an early activist on behalf of Native Americans. This long-overdue biography of Jackson's remarkable life and times reintroduces a distinguished figure in American letters and restores Helen Hunt Jackson to her rightful place in history.
Discussing much new material, Kate Phillips makes extensive use of Jackson's unpublished private correspondence. She takes us from Jackson's early years in rural New England to her later pioneer days in Colorado and to her adventerous travels in Europe and Southern California. The book also gives the first in-depth discussions of Jackson's writing in every genre, her beliefs about race and religion, and the significance of her chronic illnesses. Phillips also discusses Jackson's intimate relationships--with her two husbands, her mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the famed actress Charlotte Cushman, and the poet Emily Dickinson. Phillips concludes with a re-evaluation of Ramona, discussing the novel as the earliest example of the California dystopian tradition in its portrayal of a state on the road to self-destruction, a tradition carried further by writers like Nathanael West and Joan Didion.
In this gripping biography, Phillips offers fascinating glimpses of how social context both shaped and inspired Jackson's thinking, highlighting the inextricable presence of gender, race, and class in American literary history and culture and opening a new window onto the nineteenth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of those authors...
...you just can't get over,once you've read her work you want to know everything there is to know about her! ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Boring
I had read a good review of this book in the newspaper, and, since I was going to spend a week in Ramona, California, thought I should read it.
It is the most boring, dry book I think I ever read.About half the book is references to the writing.I finally gave up on it, and threw it in the trash.

Examines the myth of Ramona in the regional tourist history
The heroine of Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel Ramona started a trend of Ramona naming of landmarks which became part of many a tourist's journey to Southern California at the time. Surprisingly, Ramona Memories: Tourism And The Shaping Of Southern California is the first study to consider the influence of Jackson's fictional character and setting on the real world of Southern California. DeLyser examines the myth of Ramona in the regional tourist history, the establishment of attractions by fans of the novel, and tells of numerous Ramona enthusiasts who took elements of the novel and made them a part of their lives.
... Read more