Between Whiles

Between Whiles is a collection of short stories by Helen Hunt Jackson, the American writer who lived from 1830 to 1885 and who is best known for her novel Ramona of 1884. The collection appeared in 1887, two years after her death, and gathered short fiction Jackson had been producing for various magazines during the previous decade alongside her better known nonfiction and her famous final novel.

The stories cover a wide range of American settings, reflecting Jackson’s own substantial travels during the years she was working as a writer. There are stories set in New England, where she had grown up in Amherst alongside Emily Dickinson. There are stories set in the West, particularly in Colorado where she lived for many years with her second husband. There are stories set in California, drawing on the research she had done for her Native American advocacy work. The collection gives a good sense of the range of her short fiction and of her particular ability to find drama in the ordinary lives of women of various ages and circumstances.

Jackson’s short fiction is less famous than Ramona and the nonfiction Century of Dishonor, but it has its own quiet strengths. She was particularly good on the inner lives of women whose external circumstances offered limited dramatic possibility, and several of the stories in this collection are early examples of the kind of psychological realism that would become more common in later American women’s fiction.

The book runs about three hundred pages. For readers who have read Ramona and want more of Jackson’s work, this is one of the more accessible places to look for her shorter fiction.