Читать книгу Christmas Stories Rediscovered - Sarah Orne Jewett - Страница 4

INTRODUCTION, by Barbara Quarton

A hush falls over a college library in early December. The fever pitch of finals week subsides. Professors post grades; one can almost hear the collective sigh of relief. As students and faculty leave campus for winter break, public places in the library become deserted. The stacks are blanketed in silence.

On one of those quiet December days, I sat alone in my office. After a hectic fall quarter, I was happy to have an opportunity to focus on new projects. I enjoyed a long, productive spell at the computer, and then decided to stretch my legs. Soon I found myself wandering contentedly through the library. Oh, the pleasure of browsing familiar stacks on a gray December day....

As I roamed the vacant stacks I allowed my attention to be drawn to the binding—the hard cover—of a very old magazine. The binding appealed to me because it was obviously original and it was beautiful in a way that few things are anymore. There were many volumes of this magazine, and the entire set took up several shelves. I spent a long time gingerly turning tanned pages and getting to know the layout of each issue. I examined the illustrations and photographs and, skimming the indexes, I marveled at the many now-famous fiction writers, poets, statesmen, and essayists whose works appeared in the magazine: Thoreau, Melville, Crane, Longfellow, Wharton, Twain, Chopin, and Muir, to name just a few. I fell in love with the short fiction and the essays. I had stumbled upon The Century Illustrated Magazine, and it was nearly one hundred twenty years old.

In December, Christmas is not far from my mind. So when I came across the holiday story, “Wulfy: A Waif,” in the December 1891 issue, I read it...and was touched by it. Were other Christmas stories of the period as poignant? I returned to the stacks many times after that to hunt down and read all the holiday stories in The Century. Indeed, I discovered several literary gems.

Christmas Stories Rediscovered is a collection of fifteen Christmas stories first published in The Century Illustrated Magazine during America’s Gilded Age, 1891-1905. Each story is introduced with a bit of historical or literary context. Respectfully, no changes were made to the stories; the reader will find original word spellings, punctuation, dialect, and nineteenth-century turns of phrase left intact. The stories reveal much about day-to-day life in a long-ago time. I hope you find great pleasure—and perhaps a new bond with your forebears—reading these charming old holiday stories.