4 h 58 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your dream of country peace begins with an abandoned farm and a great deal of work?
In Dwellers in Arcady, Albert Bigelow Paine explores the joys and struggles of bringing an abandoned New England farm back to life. The longing is simple: leave the city behind and make a home on the land. But old buildings and rough fields ask for more than a love of quiet.
The title points to Arcadia, the poetic dream of a simple, happy country life. Paine brings that dream close to the daily labor it requires. Seasons set the pace, while neighbors bring knowledge of weather, roads and local stories. The pleasure lies in seeing rural hope meet the patient work of making a home.
What you’ll discover
- The country dream Explore the longing for fields, trees and quiet beyond the crowded streets of the city.
- A farm awaiting care Meet an abandoned place whose promise comes with the demands of patient restoration.
- Life by the seasons Follow planting, growth, harvest and winter quiet as the year shapes country life.
- Neighbors who know Find the human side of the landscape through neighbors and their knowledge of the district.
- Pleasure beside hard work Enjoy warm, plain writing about the gap between rural dreams and daily effort.
Who will love it
Readers who love old houses, gardens, trout brooks and country neighbors will feel at home here, as will anyone who enjoys a funny, affectionate story of a family starting a new life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A brook, a saltbox house, an attic
- Neighbors who make the farm possible
- The family arrives and the past turns up
- Attic treasures and household mishaps
- Moving in, with smoke and pigs
- Account books and Thanksgiving
- Winter, gardens and a cast of helpers
- Cow, chickens and the golden summers
- Leaving the farm
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- 4 h 58 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Moradores de Arcadia
by Albert Bigelow Paine · 1917
A family pays nine hundred dollars for a Connecticut farm with a trout brook and an attic full of treasures.
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In short
Dwellers in Arcady is a memoir by Albert Bigelow Paine, an American writer who died in 1937. It tells how he, his wife Elizabeth and their three daughters buy an abandoned farm in Brook Ridge, Connecticut, and spend twelve years making it a home.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A brook, a saltbox house, an attic
The book opens on a summer day about twelve years before it was written. A driver takes the author and Elizabeth up a hill road, and a broken trace stops them near a sagging old house. They wonder if their own house will look like that one. Then they reach a valley and meet William C. Westbury, who has the key.
Westbury points out a little cascade in a meadow and says it is the brook that runs through the farm. Paine has dreamed all his life of owning a brook, and he asks at once about trout. The farm is thirty one acres, more or less, with woods, a meadow and an orchard.
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What is Dwellers in Arcady about?
It is a memoir of a family that buys an abandoned farm in Brook Ridge, Connecticut, and spends twelve years restoring the house, planting gardens, and getting to know the neighbors and the land.
Who are the Pride, the Hope and the Joy?
They are the author's nicknames for his three daughters, aged twelve, seven and two when the family moves to the farm. Each has a personality, and the youngest imagines herself a horse.
Is Dwellers in Arcady a true story?
Paine tells it as his own experience, written about a dozen years after the family bought the farm. Some names are playful nicknames, and Westbury's tales are partly embroidered, as Paine says himself.
The author
Albert Bigelow Paine
1861–1937 · American writer and biographer
Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1937) was an American writer and biographer. He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and died in New Smyrna, Florida. He wrote fiction, children’s books, and biographies. His three-volume biography of Mark Twain appeared in 1912. He also edited collections of Twain’s letters and other writings.
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