When Laura Spelman learns that she will not get well, she looks on this last illness as a journey during which she must reckon up her life, give up the nonessential, and concentrate on what she calls "the real connections."The heart of the story is Laura's realization that for her the real connections have been with women: her brilliant and devastating mother, a difficult daughter, and most of all a woman she knew when she was young.

Reckoning

Literature & Fiction

MAY SARTON

Contemporary

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

The author chronicles her efforts to regain her health after having suffered a stroke at the age of seventy-three, describes he self-proclaimed life of solitude, and offers keen observations on the natural world surrounding her.

After the Stroke: A Journal

Health, Fitness & Dieting

W.W.Norton

Collects the best of Mary Sarton's novels, journals, and poetry offering an overview of her explorations of life and its joys

Sarton Selected: An Anthology of the Journals, Novels, and Poetry of May Sarton

Still writing and growing in her early eighties, May Sarton long ago established a unique niche for herself in twentieth-century American literature: in numerous volumes of poetry, fiction, and personal journals she has created a body of work that is both artistically beautiful and comforting, while always testifying to the importance of courage and love in the survival of the perceptive individual.May Sarton: Among the Usual Days is a treasure trove of her unpublished writing, carefully selected by longtime friend Susan Sherman from almost seventy years of correspondence and journals stored in the New York Public Library's Berg Collection, in May Sarton's own files, and in other archives. Thematically arranged, these passages reflect the seasons of her flowering as writer, teacher, daughter, lover, friend, and fiercely independent thinker. Lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished photos of Sarton and her closest companions from her infancy to the present, in May Sarton: Among the Usual Days all of the great abiding themes of her craft recur and expand: her respect for poetic form, hunger for love, appreciation for the centrality of solitude, commitment to enduring friendship, unabashed relish for the natural world in all its aspects, and zeal in pursuit of honesty above all, no matter what the cost. Her canny eye and ear bring alive her encounters with such luminaries as Virginia Woolf, Eva Le Gallienne, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bowen, Andre Malraux, Rebecca West, and Julian and Juliette Huxley. May Sarton: Among the Usual Days is finally a celebration, a cornucopia of earned wisdom and ardent candor that reveals over and again, in Sherman's words, the distinguishedwriter May Sarton's own "sacramentalization of the ordinary."

May Sarton Among the Usual Days: A Portrait

United States

W.W.Norton&Company

A delightful, whimsical tale―one of the most popular books for cat lovers ever written, now newly illustrated. May Sarton's fictionalized account of her cat Tom Jones's life and adventures prior to making the author's acquaintance begins with a fiercely independent, nameless street cat who follows the ten commandments of the Gentleman Cat―including "A Gentleman Cat allows no constraint of his person, not even loving constraint." But after several years of roaming, Tom has grown tired of his vagabond lifestyle, and he concludes that there might be some appeal after all in giving up the freedom of street life for a loving home. It will take just the right human companion, however, to make his transformation from Cat About Town to genuine Fur Person possible. Sarton's book is one of the most beloved stories ever written about the joys and tribulations inherent in sharing one's life with a cat. This edition, beautifully illustrated with 9 new color watercolors by Jared Williams, will continue to be an enduring favorite. 9 new color watercolors

The Fur Person

Literary

Forty years of correspondence from one of America's most beloved authors, chronicling her life with compelling candor. The engrossing drama begun in May Sarton: Selected Letters 1916–1954 culminates in this gathering of 200 quintessential letters, culled from thousands. Copiously annotated, they propel the reader with passionate immediacy through the rich years of this beloved author's maturity and world-wide fame, to her death. "Sarton is one of the great letter writers of our time," Library Journal affirmed of the first volume. And here once again we see her in every aspect: the hard-pressed writer, the tormented lover, at her fiercest and most fond; the friend, confidante and passionate traveler, intensely engaged by public issues, ceaselessly searching for the elusive muse which made poetry and the creative transformation of life possible. In addition to longtime friends and intimates familiar from Volume One―Louise Bogan, Eva Le Gallienne, Bill Brown, Muriel Rukeyser and the Huxleys―the more than 150 recipients in this volume include Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bowen, Carolyn Heilbrun and Doris Grumbach, Madeleine L'Engle, Pat Carroll, and Marianne Moore. "No topic escapes her," Susan Kenney wrote of the first volume, and in the breadth and amplitude of these vibrant missives to friends and strangers, poets and scientists, actors and scholars, teachers and editors from every corner of the States and throughout Europe, the reader will partake of her joys, and learn well her griefs; it is no coincidence she always capitalized Hell. Particularly rich are her letters to members of the religious community who were drawn to the spiritual center in her work; her magnificent letters of condolence; her fiery replies to critics; her trenchant, generous responses to the many young writers who touched her; and her life-enhancing responses to hordes of admirers. Here, too, we are privy to several intense love relationships, and live beside her through the landmark publications of Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing and her revolutionary Journal of a Solitude. We accompany her as she writes the celebrated lyric poems which, with missionary fervor, she brought alive in dynamic readings to standing-room-only audiences across America, as long as she could do so. And finally we are witness to the gradual diminishments of age as, with characteristic courage, she charges into her ninth decade, "ardent and alone." Selected Letters 1955–1995 offers new insights and throws fascinating sidelights on Sarton's multi-faceted character, presenting an awesome self-portrait―more revealing than anything yet published―of this truly singular woman who, faithful to her "vision of life"―and like the legendary phoenix which marks her grave ―never ceased to be reborn over and over again. As critic William Drake put it, "May Sarton always seems to be speaking to each one of us personally, as if we were a friend." In this richly moving and nourishing collection―the capstone of her literary legacy―this unforgettable woman speaks to each of us, as to each correspondent, once again in her timeless voice. "Readers will find this volume a valuable companion to Sarton's other work; reading it put me back in touch with her keen intelligence, her restless but rich spirit, and I enjoyed it tremendously." ―Eleanor Dwight, author of Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life "In a century of cruel inhumanity, 'life-enhancing' poet, novelist and journal-keeper May Sarton showed us, most of all, how to be human. . . . That is why we find in her a friend, and will keep rereading these thoughtful letters and her books for clues about the journey ahead." ―Father John Dear, author of Living Peace "Those who know her journals will find here a Sarton willing to examine the underside of creativity, a Sarton who refuses to stay stuck in life or work. This book passes on that courage to readers." ―Alexandra Johnson, author of Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal "A searingly honest self-portrait of a complex and many-sided woman. . . . What a feast!" ―Dr. Claire Douglas, author of Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan, the Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle

May Sarton: Selected Letters, 1955-1995

Biographies & Memoirs

William Drake

Arts & Literature

Joanna And Ulysses by Sarton, Mary. 8vo. 1st ptg.

Joanna and Ulysses

A novel in the form of a diary, this story tells of Caroline Spencer, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher who has suffered a heart attack and been deposited by relatives in an old people's home. Subjected to subtle humiliations and petty cruelties, she fights back with all she has, and in a powerful climax wins a terrible victory. "I shared the anger and the righteous indignation which I felt behind every line".--Madeleine L'Engle.

As We Are Now

May Sarton describes living at her eighteenth-century house in Nelson, New Hampshireâ€”how she acquired it, how it and the garden became part of her.

Plant Dreaming Deep

As We are Now

Littlehampton Book Services Ltd.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MAY SARTON. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MAY SARTON