This unique collection includes pioneering feminist novels, rare
stories, restored drawings, and hard-to-find writings from the author
of Little Women
After the success of her beloved masterpiece Little Women, Louisa May
Alcott brought her genius for characterization and eye for detail to a
series of revolutionary novels and stories that are remarkable in their
forthright assertion of women's rights. This second volume of The
Library of America's Alcott edition gathers these works for the first
time, revealing a fascinating and inspiring dimension of a classic
American writer.
The first of a trio of novels written over a fruitful three-year period,
Work: A Story of Experience has been called the adult Little Women.
It follows the semi-autobiographical story of an orphan named Christie
Devon, who, having turned twenty-one, announces "a new Declaration of
Independence" and leaves her uncle's house in order to pursue economic
self-sufficiency and to find fulfillment in her profession. Against the
backdrop of the Civil War years, Christie works as a servant, actress,
governess, companion, seamstress, and army nurse--all jobs that Alcott
knew from personal experience--exposing the often insidious ways in
which the employments conventionally available to women constrain their
self-determination. Alcott's most overtly feminist novel, Work breaks
new ground in the literary representation of women, as its heroine
pushes at the boundaries of nineteenth-century expectations and
assumptions.
Eight Cousins concerns the education of Rose Campbell, another orphan
who, in her delicate nature and frail health, seems to embody many of
the stereotypes of girlhood that shaped Alcott's world. But with the
benefit of an unorthodox, progressive education and the good and bad
examples of her many crisply drawn relations-- especially her seven boy
cousins--Rose regains her health and envisions a career both as a wife
and mother and as a philanthropist. She insists that she will manage her
own fortune rather than find a husband to do it for her in the sequel,
Rose in Bloom.
This Library of America edition includes several noteworthy features.
All three novels are presented with beautifully restored line art from
the original editions and are supplemented by seven hard-to-find stories
and public letters (two restored to print for the first time in more
than a century), an authoritative chronology of Alcott's life, and notes
identifying her allusions, quotations, and the autobiographical episodes
in her fiction.
