Alternative Alcott / Edition 1

by Louisa May Alcott, Elaine Showalter

Overview

The discovery in recent years of Louisa May Alcott's pseudonymous sensation stories has made readers and scholars increasingly aware of her accomplishments beyond her most famous novel, Little Women, one of the great international best-sellers of all time. What has been recovered throws new light on the children's books and asks us to question our assumptions about the suposedly staid and sentimental Alcott.

Alternative Alcott includes works never before reprinted, including "How I Went Out to Service," "My Contraband," and "Psyche's Art." It also contains Behind a Mask, her most important sensation story; the full and correct text of her last unfinished novel, Diana and Persis; "Transcendental Wild Oats"; Hospital Sketches; and Alcott's other important texts on nineteenth-century social history. This anthology brings together for the first time a variety of Louisa May Alcott's journalistic, satiric, feminist, and sensation texts. Elaine Showalter has provided an excellent introduction and notes to the collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813512723
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1988
Series:	American Women Writers
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, (born November 29, 1832, Germantown, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died March 6, 1888, Boston, Massachusetts), American author known for her children’s books, especially the classic Little Women (1868-69).

ELAINE SHOWALTER has written and edited numerous books and articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, sometimes sparking widespread controversy, especially with her work on illnesses.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Selected Bibliography
A Note on the Text
Hospital Sketches
My Contraband
Behind a Mask
Happy Women
Psyche's Art
The Sunny Side, from an Old-Fashioned Girl
Work: A Story of Experience
How I Went Out to Service
Transcendental Wild Oats
Diana and Persis
Jo's Last Scrape, from Jo's Boys
Explanatory Notes

What People are Saying About This

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

This series is an ambitious, exciting, and highly valuable contribution to the reclamation of American women's lost literature.

Editorial Reviews

Brings together for the first time in a single volume a broad selection of Alcott's thrillers, satirical narratives and feminist works.

Choice