A young girl’s silent, self-sacrificing defence of nature is at the heart of the much anthologized American short story, “A White Heron”. The story, hailed as a “tiny classic” when it first appeared in 1886 (Silverthorne, 125), resembles a fable with its seemingly simple elements of an innocent girl, a charming young man, a rustic setting remote from worldly concerns, and a beautiful, threatened bird.
“A White Heron” was the title piece in a book of short stories by American writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1901), published by Houghton Mifflin. Like Jewett’s earlier story collection Deephaven and her highly praised later collection The Country of the Pointed Firs, “…
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