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Louisa May Alcott: Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Stories & Other Writings

Painstakingly restored drawings from the original editions of the novels | Seven hard-to-find stories and public letters | More

Edited by Susan Cheever

Pioneering feminist novels and rare stories from the author of Little Women

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Video Kate Bolick: “Feminism is common sense,” and other truths from Little Women
November 4, 2019

Story of the Week Louisa May Alcott, “My Girls”
May 18, 2017

The Moviegoer Classic Hollywood Little Women captures the story’s appeal for all time
October 18, 2016

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 (1873) 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 (1875) 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 (one informed by the theories of Alcott’s transcendentalist father Bronson Alcott) 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.

In Rose in Bloom (1876), the sequel to Eight Cousins, Rose, now twenty, comes out into society and must navigate its perils while choosing between several suitors, including two of her cousins. Further advancing Alcott’s passionate advocacy of women’s rights, Rose insists that she will manage her own fortune rather than find a husband to do it for her.

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.

Susan Cheever, editor, is the author of five novels and eight works of nonfiction, including American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography. She serves as a director of the Yaddo Corporation, and teaches at the Bennington College MFA Program and the New School.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Video Kate Bolick: “Feminism is common sense,” and other truths from Little Women
November 4, 2019

Story of the Week Louisa May Alcott, “My Girls”
May 18, 2017

The Moviegoer Classic Hollywood Little Women captures the story’s appeal for all time
October 18, 2016

News How Louisa May Alcott revolutionized the “book for girls” with Little Women
March 21, 2016

Story of the Week “Kate’s Choice,” Louisa May Alcott
December 22, 2015
Table of Contents

Work: A Story of Experience

Eight Cousins

Rose in Bloom

Other Writings
Address of the Republican Women of Massachusetts
Kate’s Choice
How I Went Out to Service
Woman’s Part in the Concord Celebration
Letter to the Woman’s Journal, June 29, 1876
Anna’s Whim
My Girls

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-306-4 894 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 256 Library of America Series

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