Golden Tales Of New England

by May Lamberton Becker (Editor)

378 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1985

About the author

May Lamberton Becker (August 26, 1873 - April 27, 1958) was an American literary critic and author.

For more than forty years She wrote a weekly 'Readers Guide', first with the New York Evening Post, then with the Saturday Review of Literature and finally in the weekly book section of the New York Herald Tribune, of which she later became literary editor.

She was well known as a lecturer on literature and drama. She wrote a number of introductions for the Rainbow Classics series of children's books.
Becker was also known as an anthologist, who was responsible for the Golden Tales series (Golden Tales of Our America (1929), Golden Tales of the Old South (1930), Golden Tales of New England (1931), Golden Tales of the Prairie States (1932), Golden Tales of the Far West (1935), Golden Tales of Canada (1938), Golden Tales of the Southwest (1938)), as well as several unrelated collections (Under Twenty (1932), A Treasure Box of Stories for Children (1937), Growing Up With America (1941), The Home Book of Christmas (1941), Youth Replies, I Can: Stories of Resistance (1945), The Home Book of Laughter (1948)). She wrote two biographies for young people, Introducing Charles Dickens (1941) and Presenting Miss Jane Austen (1952), and several books of advice regarding reading (A Reader's Guide Book (1924), Adventures in Reading (1927), Books as Windows (1929), Reading Menus for Young People (1935), First Adventures in Reading (1936, published in England 1937 as Choosing Books for Children), and compiled The Rainbow Mother Goose (1937) and The Rainbow Book of Bible Stories (1948). Five Cats from Siam (1935) and Foreign Cookery (1950) were her other titles.

Reviews

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writers used a different kind of language to create feel-good stories in the 19th century.
Golden Tales of New England is a feel-good sample of 17 of them.
You’ll recognize some of the authors: Hawthorne, Thoreau, Louisa Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe…
The others might be new for you, as they are for me, like the offering of Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), “A Town Mouse and a Country Mouse.” It’s an authentic, ample exhibition of New England patois and sturdy New England character. Meet “Mandy” and “M’lindy,” two aging sisters who were born Amanda and Melinda, and who were fated to share their living, mostly at a distance but, in the end, so inescapably together.
Here’s Amanda sadly recounting her sister’s death: “I guess I’ve got through…[Melinda] went an’ married that old Parker, an’ then she up and died. I wish’t I’d ha’ stayed with her longer; mabbe she wouldn’t have died. She wa’n’t old; not nigh so old as I be…I feel a goneness that I never had ketch hold o’ me before…”
Hawthorne’s “Old Esther Dudley” is a dainty adoration of a venerable lady who never gave up being a Tory during the Revolutionary War, and persisted in being the almost ghostly guardian of Province House in Boston after the British departed.
The other Golden Tales are equally exotic morsels of what entertained the citizens of the Republic long before television and Twitter.
Read more of my book reviews here:
http://richardsubber.com/

[Bryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of 19th and early 20th century short stories from New England, attempting to give a picture of the region through fiction. Some I liked, others I ended up skimming or just skipping entirely. It was all right, but perhaps a bit much of a muchness.