American writer Sarah Orne Jewett was BOTD in 1849. Born in South Berwick, Maine to an established New England family, she began publishing stories and poetry in her teens. Her first novel A Country Doctor was published in 1884, based on her father’s career and her own unfulfilled ambition to be a doctor. A White Heron, a collection of short stories presenting vignettes of country life, was published in 1886. Her most successful novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs, was serialised in the Atlantic Monthly and later expanded into a novel. A semi-autobiographical story about an independent single woman novelist living in Maine, it drew praise from Henry James and became a major work in the American literary regionalism movement. Her 1887 novel Deephaven obliquely explored lesbian desire, while her poetry, mostly unpublished in her lifetime, included a number of love poems written to women. Jewett never married and had a number of close friendships with women, writing in her diary about her crush on friend Kate Birckhead. She lived from 1881 until her death with fellow writer Annie Adams Fields in a “Boston marriage”, travelling together in Europe and hosting literary salons. She died in 1909 aged 59.