Alternative Alcott by Louisa May Alcott - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813512719 ISBN 13: 9780813512716

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1988

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

From Library Journal

Alcott's pseudonymous sensation stories have only recently been discovered; along with her adult novels, historical and feminist essays, and memoir of the failed communal experiment that was her childhood, they show us that there was indeed and "alternative Alcott." This volume reprints much of Alcott's "alternative" fiction, including the satirical Transcendental Wild Oats. Though brilliant, Showalter's introduction is at times excessively Freudian and speculative; literature can and must stand on its own. Still, this is a highly pertinent anthology. Marc Widershien, State Lib. of Massachusetts
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0813512719
• ISBN 13: 9780813512716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Showalter Elaine