A New England Nun And Other stories

"A New England Nun And Other stories," is a collection of short stories about nostalgic New England small town & village life, showcasing Wilkin's basic beliefs.


The "Nun" of the title story is Louisa Ellis, a woman who has lived alone for many years. She is considered eccentric; keeps her house meticulously clean, wears multiple aprons, & eats from her nicest china every day. Her old dog, Caesar, she keeps chained because he bit a neighbor 8 years ago as a puppy. Louisa promised Joe Dagget, 14 years ago that she would marry him when he returned from Australia. He has returned & it is time for her to fulfill her promise.


One night, as Louisa is enjoying a stroll, she overhears a conversation between Joe Dagget & Lily. Louisa learns that Joe & Lily have been seeing each other in the short time that Joe has been back, & that Joe is in love with Lily, but refuses to break his promise to Louisa.


The next day, Louisa releases Joe from his promise without letting him know that she is aware of Lily. Louisa is thankfully left alone to maintain her lifestyle.


The last line of the story is: "Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an un-cloistered nun."


Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), produced two dozen volumes of short stories & novels. Her stories deal with small town New England life & are among the best of their kind.


Her work has enjoyed renewed interest. Critics feel her women characters, when confronted by unreasonable & dominating male demands, muster latent, unexpected strengths, revealing an impressive spirit of independence. These are women who, stranded in economically floundering towns, have divined for themselves a life that is not dependent upon marriage, maternity, mothering, or taking on the role of housewife or home-keeper in a patriarchal family. Her major themes reflect the issues that were her life: the inner sanctum of women, Puritanism, religion & the effects it has on the psyche, poverty & degradation, marriage, and the supernatural mysticism found within the history & natural beauty of her New England home.


In April 1926, She became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


There are approximately 134,700+ words and approximately 449 pages at 300 words per page in this e-book.


NOTE: This book has been scanned then OCR (Optical Character Recognition) has been applied to turn the scanned page images back into editable text. Then every effort has been made to correct typos, spelling, and to eliminate stray marks picked up by the OCR program. The original and/or extra period images, if any, were then placed in the appropriate place and, finally, the file was formatted for the e-book criteria of the site. This means that the text CAN be re-sized, searches performed, & bookmarks added, unlike some other e-books that are only scanned---errors, stray marks, and all.


We have added an Interactive Table of Contents & an Interactive List of Illustrations if any were present in the original. This means that the reader can click on the links in the Table of Contents or the List of Illustrations & be instantly transported to that chapter or illustration.


Our aim is to provide the reader AND the collector with long out-of-print (OOP) classic books at realistic prices. If you load your mobile device(s) with our books, not only will you have fingertip access to a large library of antiquarian and out-of-print material at reasonable prices, but you can mark them up electronically & always have them for immediate reference without worrying about damage or loss to expensive bound copies.


We will be adding to our titles regularly, look for our offerings on your favorite e-book site.