Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

by Kate Douglas Wiggin, Susan K. Harris (Introduction), Shawn Thomson (Noted by)

Overview

Hugely popular when it was first published in 1903 and admired by authors from Jack London to Mark Twain, this delightful novel introduced a heroine as irrepressible and fun-loving as Tom Sawyer, who would serve as a role model for a century of American girls and women. When ten-year-old Rebecca Randall comes to live with flinty aunt Miranda and her sentimental sister Jane in a small town in Maine, they expect to turn her into a proper young lady. Instead, Rebecca will end up changing them. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is as charming today as it was one hundred years ago and is unexpectedly poignant in its evocation of an America contemplating the choices open to women facing their futures in a new era.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143039204
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/31/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.11(w) x 7.71(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	10 - 17 Years

About the Author

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) was a teacher, lecturer, and editor, as well as a writer of novels and short stories for adults and children.

Shawn Thomson is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Kansas.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

"We Are Seven"

The old stage coach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro. The day was as warm as midsummer, though it was only the middle of May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and he revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.

There was one passenger in the coach -- a small dark-haired person in a glossy buff calico dress. She was so slender and so stiffly starched that she slid from space to space on the leather cushions, though she braced herself against the middle seat with her feet and extended her cotton-gloved hands on each side, in order to maintain some sort of balance. Whenever the wheels sank farther than usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone, she bounded involuntarily into the air, came down again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and picked up or settled more firmly a small pink sunshade, which seemed to be her chief responsibility -- unless we except a bead purse, into which she looked whenever the condition of the roads would permit, finding great apparent satisfaction in that its precious contents neither disappeared nor grew less. Mr. Cobb guessed nothing of these harassing details of travel, his business being to carry people to their destinations, not, necessarily, to make them comfortable on the way. Indeed he had forgotten thevery existence of this one unnoteworthy little passenger.

When he was about to leave the post-office in Maplewood that morning, a woman had alighted from a wagon, and coming up to him, inquired whether this were the Riverboro stage, and if he were Mr. Cobb. Being answered in the affirmative, she nodded to a child who was eagerly waiting for the answer, and who ran towards her as if she feared to be a moment too late. The child might have been ten or eleven years old perhaps, but whatever the number of her summers, she had an air of being small for her age. Her mother helped her into the stage coach, deposited a bundle and a bouquet of lilacs beside her, superintended the "roping on" behind of an old hair trunk, and finally paid the fare, counting out the silver with great care.

"I want you should take her to my sisters' in Riverboro," she said. "Do you know Mirandy and Jane Sawyer? They live in the brick house."

Lord bless your soul, he knew 'em as well as if he'd made 'em!

"Well, she's going there, and they're expecting her. Will you keep an eye on her, please? If she can get out anywhere and get with folks, or get anybody in to keep her company, she'll do it. Goodbye, Rebecca; try not to get into any mischief, and sit quiet, so you'll look neat an' nice when you get there. Don't be any trouble to Mr. Cobb -- you see, she's kind of excited. We came on the cars from Temperance yesterday, slept all night at my cousin's, and drove from her house-eight miles it is -- this morning."

"Good-bye, Mother, don't worry; you know it isn't as if I hadn't traveled before."

The woman gave a short sardonic laugh and said in an explanatory way to Mr. Cobb, "She's been to Wareham and stayed over night; that isn't much to be journey-proud on!"

"It was traveling, Mother," said the child eagerly and willfully. "It was leaving the farm, and putting up lunch in a basket, and a little riding and a little steam cars, and we carried our nightgowns."

"Don't tell the whole village about it, if we did," said the mother, interrupting the reminiscences of this experienced voyager. "Haven't I told you before, she whispered, in a last attempt at discipline, "that you shouldn't talk about nightgowns and stockings and-things like that, in a loud tone of voice, and especially when there's men folks round?"

"I know, Mother, I know, and I won't. All I want to say is"- here Mr. Cobb gave a cluck, slapped the reins, and the horses started sedately on their daily task -- "all I want to say is that it is a journey when" -- the stage was really under way now and Rebecca had to put her head out of the window over the door in order to finish her sentence -- "it is a journey when you carry a nightgown!"

The objectionable word, uttered in a high treble, floated back to the offended ears of Mrs. Randall, who watched the stage out of sight, gathered up her packages from the bench at the store door, and stepped into the wagon that had been standing at the hitchingpost. As she turned the horse's head towards home she rose to her feet for a moment, and shading her eyes with her hand, looked at a cloud of dust in the dim distance.

"Mirandy'll have her hands full, I guess," she said to herself, "but I shouldn't wonder if it would be the making of Rebecca."

All this had been half an hour ago, and the sun, the heat, the dust, the contemplation of errands to be done in the great metropolis of Milltown, had lulled Mr. Cobb's never active mind into complete oblivion as to his promise of keeping an eye on Rebecca.

Suddenly he heard a small voice above the rattle and rumble of the wheels and the creaking of the harness. At first he thought it was a cricket, a tree toad, or a bird, but having determined the direction from which it came, he turned his head over his shoulder and saw a small shape hanging as far out of the window as safety would allow.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Copyright © by Kate Wiggin. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
1.	"We are Seven"	1
2.	Rebecca's Relations	18
3.	A Difference in Hearts	25
4.	Rebecca's Point of view	35
5.	Wisdom's Ways	41
6.	Sunshine in a Shady Place	53
7.	Riverboro Secrets	62
8.	Color of Rose	71
9.	Ashes of Roses	77
10.	Rainbow Bridges	85
11.	"The Stirring of the Powers"	93
12.	"See the Pale Martyr"	101
13.	Snow-White; Rose-Red	114
14.	Mr. Aladdin	121
15.	The Banquet Lamp	130
16.	Seasons of Growth	139
17.	Gray Days and Gold	150
18.	Rebecca Represents the Family	158
19.	Deacon Israel's Successor	167
20.	A Change of Heart	176
21.	The Sky Line Widens	185
22.	Clover Blossoms and Sunflowers	196
23.	The Hill Difficulty	209
24.	Aladdin Rubs His Lamp	216
25.	Roses of Joy	225
26.	"Over the Teacups"	237
27.	"The Vision Splendid"	246
28.	"Th' Inevitable Yoke"	255
29.	Mother and Daughter	266
30.	Good-By, Sunnybrook!	274
31.	Aunt Miranda's Apology	281
	About Kate Douglas Wiggin	287

Editorial Reviews

A logical and welcome addition to HarperCollins's aptly titled Charming Classics. Kids will prize the pink-and-gold parasol charm and necklace.

Why could [Rebecca] not have been my daughter? Why couldn’t it have been I who bought the three hundred cakes of soap? Why, O, why?”

Jack London

Beautiful and warm and satisfying.”

Mark Twain

Many an older heroine of fiction has failed to arouse the sympathy that little Rebecca recieves from her acquaintances, both in and out of the book...[she] will live in our hearts and minds for many a day.”

1903 The Week’s Progress