Mary Ellen Chase (1887-1973), though not too well known today, was the successor to Sarah Orne Jewett among Maine writers. The Edge of Darkness (my own favorite of Chase's novels and, as I understand, also her own) is the successor to The Country of the Pointed Firs and the predecessor to Olive Kitteridge. Chase taught at Smith College from 1926 through 1955, eventually serving as chair of the English Department, and numbered among her students Anne Morrow (Lindbergh), Sylvia Plath, and Bettye Naomi Goldstein (better known as Betty Friedan).

Born and raised in Blue Hill, Chase left Maine as a young graduate of the University of Maine to teach in the Midwest and to receive her doctorate from the University of Minnesota (after spending a year in successful recovery from pulmonary disease), finally returning to New England to teach at Smith. A Goodly Fellowship is the sequel to Chase's earlier memoir A Goodly Heritage, which narrates her Blue Hill childhood.

As of this time, I have read not much more of A Goodly Heritage than a single chapter, "The Lord's Day in the Nineties," excerpted in the anthology The Maine Reader: The Down East Experience, 1614 to the Present, though I did begin A Goodly Heritage quite some while ago and then became distracted (through my fault, not Chase's!). I do suspect that A Goodly Heritage is a better read than this sequel.

The first two chapters of A Goodly Fellowship – "My Earliest Teachers" and "My First Experience in Teaching" – were particularly good, but they are (by Chase's own admission) a repeat of material from A Goodly Heritage. While there are some humorous scenes in the next few chapters as Chase departs from Blue Hill to seek her fortune in the Midwest, the later chapters of A Goodly Fellowship become too eulogistic of her numerous colleagues in the teaching profession – individuals who are little known some three-quarters of a century after A Goodly Fellowship's publication.

Unlike A Goodly Heritage, this sequel does not well survive the test of time. While definitely a worthwhile read to any admirer of Chase, readers simply looking for a New England memoir will find Chase's first memoir the more interesting of the two. I'm giving this 3½*** because of my own interest in Chase, but most readers will probably rate it less favorably. ( )