Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1886.

First edition collected together thus. Of the 1500 copies in the first print run, 500 were purportedly issued thus, in the variant (and arguably preferable) white binding. The stories had previously appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and other periodicals. Bookplate from the Collection of First Editions of Distinguished American Women, Pine Manor Junior College, Wellesley Massachusetts to the front free endpaper.

The collection includes one of Sarah Orne Jewett’s best known stories, which gives the collection its name. “The White Heron” tells the tale of a city girl falling in love with the country, its animals and its people, and is a fantastic example of Jewett’s literary sensibility. Other stories focus on the rural lives of elderly women and their attempts to live with dignity and security, with themes of female friendship in "The Dulham Ladies" and "Miss Tempy's Watchers" characteristic of much of her other work.

“Sylvia's heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white bird, and had once stolen softly near where it stood in some bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side of the woods. There was an open place where the sunshine always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall, nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother had warned her that she might sink in the soft black mud underneath and never be heard of more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes just this side the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered and dreamed much about, but never had seen, whose great voice could sometimes be heard above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.…

Small 4to,. green and white cloth boards lettered in green to upper cover with printed heron design; lettered in gilt along backstrip; upper edge gilt; pp. [xiii], 2-254, [viii]; slightly browned to edges and endpapers, the latter slightly spotted; lower hinge cracked with webbing showing through; some dirtying to the susceptible white boards; rubbed to spine tips; very good, still.