This website serves as an access point to the more than 1800 citations in Kathrine Cole Aydelott's doctoral dissertation Maine Stream: A Bibliographic Reception Study of Sarah Orne Jewett (University of Connecticut, 2004).
This database can be used to find collected references to commentary on Sarah Orne Jewett's writing going back to a review of her first known published short story in 1869. Use the search box to find references in the database based on words or phrases you select. You can search for items found in specific journal titles, like the Atlantic Monthly, or search for prominent people in Jewett's private or professional life, such as Mary Wilkins Freeman or Annie Fields. You can search in particular database fields, such as title, or author; or you can search by date. Hits will be returned as citations formatted in a basic style, along with sometimes lengthy annotations that describe and analyze the entries.
Note that the annotations do not include formatted text (italics for titles, for example); nevertheless, they should provide a flavor of the original item, as well as other informational text. Give it a try.
As noted above, this interface is basic, and the whole tool is brand new. I will be working to enhance the formatting and search features in the coming months. In the meantime, if you find a reference to Jewett that I have not accounted for, please send it along for inclusion. I will work to update the reference list annually or as submissions and my own additions warrant.
This project began back in 2001 when I started research for my dissertation, "Maine Stream: A Bibliographic Reception Study of Sarah Orne Jewett," in the English Department at the University of Connecticut. The last Jewett bibliography of critical commentary had been published in 1985, so 25 important years of Jewett research had gone undocumented.
Further, older bibliographies were incomplete and some entries had errors. I knew I could both correct and supplement the existing work with newfound older items, as well as account for the 25+ years of newer items.
I also wondered whether I would be able to find all of the older references again. The result, in 2005, was a bibliography of critical comment that amounted to more than 1800 items and spanned the years 1869 to 2004.
While no work of this nature can truly be deemed comprehensive, the effort at the time was to be as comprehensive as possible as time would allow. Further, in 2005, there was no mechanism for me to submit my dissertation to the University of Connecticut electronically: I had to print all 800 pages of it, and it is bound in two volumes.
Now, more than 10 years later, it is time to put this research online where people will find it. So I present it here for your use.
I am using Sonny Software's Bookends as a repository database and server.