Search Results

Keywords: literature

Historical Items

View All Showing 2 of 643 Showing 3 of 643

Item 27979

Jacob Abbott and Fewacres, Farmington, 1903

Contributed by: Farmington Public Library Date: circa 1900 Location: Farmington Media: Engraving, ink on paper

Item 31226

Thursday Club program, Biddeford, 1897

Contributed by: McArthur Public Library Date: 1897–1898 Location: Biddeford Media: Ink on paper, ribbon

Item 28013

Four sons of Jacob Abbott, Farmington, ca. 1865

Contributed by: Farmington Public Library Date: circa 1865 Location: Farmington Media: Photographic print

Architecture & Landscape

View All Showing 1 of 1 Showing 1 of 1

Item 151729

Professor Woodruff house, Brunswick, 1906-1947

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1906–1947 Location: Brunswick Client: Frank Edward Woodruff Architect: John Calvin Stevens and John Howard Stevens Architects

Online Exhibits

View All Showing 2 of 20 Showing 3 of 20

Exhibit

Writing Women

Published women authors with ties to Maine are too numerous to count. They have made their marks in all types of literature.

Exhibit

Picturing Henry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's popularity in the 19th century is reflected by the number of images of him -- in a variety of media -- that were produced and reproduced, some to go with published works of his, but many to be sold to the public on cards and postcards.

Exhibit

Bookplates Honor Annie Louise Cary

A summer resident of Wayne collected more than 3,000 bookplates to honor Maine native and noted opera singer Annie Louise Cary and to support the Cary Memorial Library.

Site Pages

View All Showing 2 of 10 Showing 3 of 10

Site Page

Farmington: Franklin County's Shiretown - Jacob Abbott and Fewacres, Farmington, 1903

"… writing some of the earliest American juvenile literature deserving of the term "children's literature." He and his four sons had a long…"

Site Page

Biddeford History & Heritage Project - I. Headwaters of a community: Sowacatuck, Chouacoet, and the sea

"All of these tribal names are found in the early literature of the area, as well as the southern New England tribes' names for the Wabanakis --…"

Site Page

Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library

View collections, facts, and contact information for this Contributing Partner.

My Maine Stories

View All Showing 2 of 4 Showing 3 of 4

Story

In an Old, Abandoned Island House, I Found my Mentor and my Muse
by Robin Clifford Wood

An aspiring writer finds inspiration and a mentor from the past in an old island home.

Story

Ogunquit Beach Sonnet
by Shannon Schooley

Sonnet written for school when I was 12 years old.

Story

A poem about my experiences in Vietnam
by Doug Rawlings

A poem about my experiences in Vietnam

Lesson Plans

View All Showing 2 of 12 Showing 3 of 12

Lesson Plan

Bicentennial Lesson Plan

Maine's Acadian Community: "Evangeline," Le Grand Dérangement, and Cultural Survival

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
This lesson plan will introduce students to the history of the forced expulsion of thousands of people from Acadia, the Romantic look back at the tragedy in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous epic poem Evangeline and the heroine's adoption as an Acadian cultural figure, and Maine's Acadian community today, along with their relations with Acadian New Brunswick and Nova Scotia residents and others in the Acadian Diaspora. Students will read and discuss primary documents, compare and contrast Le Grand Dérangement to other forced expulsions in Maine history and discuss the significance of cultural survival amidst hardships brought on by treaties, wars, and legislation.

Lesson Plan

Bicentennial Lesson Plan

Primary Sources: Daily Life in 1820

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies
This lesson plan will give students the opportunity to explore and analyze primary source documents from the years before, during, and immediately after Maine became the 23rd state in the Union. Through close looking at documents, objects, and art from Maine during and around 1820, students will ask questions and draw informed conclusions about life at the time of statehood.

Lesson Plan

Longfellow Studies: The American Wilderness? How 19th Century American Artists Viewed the Separation Of Civilization and Nature

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
When European settlers began coming to the wilderness of North America, they did not have a vision that included changing their lifestyle. The plan was to set up self-contained communities where their version of European life could be lived. In the introduction to The Crucible, Arthur Miller even goes as far as saying that the Puritans believed the American forest to be the last stronghold of Satan on this Earth. When Roger Chillingworth shows up in The Scarlet Letter's second chapter, he is welcomed away from life with "the heathen folk" and into "a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people." In fact, as history's proven, they believed that the continent could be changed to accommodate their interests. Whether their plans were enacted in the name of God, the King, or commerce and economics, the changes always included – and still do to this day - the taming of the geographic, human, and animal environments that were here beforehand. It seems that this has always been an issue that polarizes people. Some believe that the landscape should be left intact as much as possible while others believe that the world will inevitably move on in the name of progress for the benefit of mankind. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a book which many feel is one of the best portrayals of our American reality - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks upon this progress with cynicism when he ends his narrative by pondering the transformation of "the fresh green breast of a new world" that the initial settlers found on the shores of the continent into a modern society that unsettlingly reminds him of something out of a "night scene by El Greco." Philosophically, the notions of progress, civilization, and scientific advancement are not only entirely subjective, but also rest upon the belief that things are not acceptable as they are. Europeans came here hoping for a better life, and it doesn't seem like we've stopped looking. Again, to quote Fitzgerald, it's the elusive green light and the "orgiastic future" that we've always hoped to find. Our problem has always been our stoic belief system. We cannot seem to find peace in the world either as we've found it or as someone else may have envisioned it. As an example, in Miller's The Crucible, his Judge Danforth says that: "You're either for this court or against this court." He will not allow for alternative perspectives. George W. Bush, in 2002, said that: "You're either for us or against us. There is no middle ground in the war on terror." The frontier -- be it a wilderness of physical, religious, or political nature -- has always frightened Americans. As it's portrayed in the following bits of literature and artwork, the frontier is a doomed place waiting for white, cultured, Europeans to "fix" it. Anything outside of their society is not just different, but unacceptable. The lesson plan included will introduce a few examples of 19th century portrayal of the American forest as a wilderness that people feel needs to be hesitantly looked upon. Fortunately, though, the forest seems to turn no one away. Nature likes all of its creatures, whether or not the favor is returned. While I am not providing actual activities and daily plans, the following information can serve as a rather detailed explanation of things which can combine in any fashion you'd like as a group of lessons.