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Louisa May Alcott
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Louisa May Alcott: Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Stories & Other Writings (LOA #256) (Library of America Louisa May Alcott Edition Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Louisa May Alcott (Author), Susan Cheever (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
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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.
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  1. Reading age
    12 years and up
  2. Print length
    900 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Library of America
  5. Publication date
    August 28, 2014
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  9. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  10. ISBN-13
    978-1598533064
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Susan Cheever is the author of five novels and eight works of nonfiction, including Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (2011) and American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau (2006). She serves as a director of the Yaddo Corporation, and teaches at the Bennington College MFA Program and the New School.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00LQ26SNE
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Library of America (August 28, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 28, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 6378 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 900 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 20 ratings

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Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

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Louisa May Alcott was both an abolitionist and a feminist. She is best known for Little Women (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood years with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Alcott, unlike Jo, never married: "... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man." She was an advocate of women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts.

Photo by unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
20 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reader in Upstate NY
5.0 out of 5 stars Well Done to All
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2017
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This book is very well put together. It is dense with Alcott's stories. I particularly enjoyed "Rose in Bloom." "How I Went Out to Service" was especially amusing and well written. Beyond the author, Alcott, I must praise the editor (Susan Cheever) and the publisher (Library of America) for putting together a beautiful book. One might expect an almost 900-page book of this diminutive size to be nearly unreadable; it is not. The type is quite legible. I don't have to spread the pages open in order to read all of the print. The line drawings that were included are an additional pleasure. The ribbon marker, the paper (no problem with reading the print on these pages), the binding -- all perfect. Congratulations. This is a book worth keeping.
6 people found this helpful
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TedTheDog
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect!
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2017
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Exactly as advertised. Perfect!
One person found this helpful
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KimZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2015
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Alcott- what else needs to be said?
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Peggy E. Davis
5.0 out of 5 stars Old Favorites that never get old...
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2015
Includes the Rose Campbell duology, which has been my favorite of her works since my grandmother gave me an old copy when I was very young..
3 people found this helpful
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Susan Bailey
4.0 out of 5 stars Handsome volume but nothing all that new here
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2014
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This book is lovely to look at and to read. I love that the pages stay open on their own accord and the bookmark is nice too. I didn't really see all that much in this book that was new except for one short story called "My Girls." I do, however, enjoy reading it.
3 people found this helpful
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AYJ
3.0 out of 5 stars “Work” is deservedly little known. "Rose" and "8 Cousins" are winners.
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2021
The experiences of Christie, heroine of "Work" are autobiographical, taken from Alcott’s own experiences as a house servant, actress, governess, companion, and seamstress. None of these worked out well for Alcott, and the tone of the book is very melancholy, with a strong moralizing streak which makes one with to tell Alcott, as the journal editor tells Jo in “Little Women”, “Morals don’t pay”.
The other two novels in this volume, “Eight Cousins” and “Rose in Bloom” avoid moralizing although the tone is moral, avoid gloom although dark elements are included. These two were favorites of mine as a girl, and still are.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Some Person
5.0 out of 5 stars book made to last
Reviewed in Canada on April 16, 2021
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durable book, wonderful read
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William Jordan
3.0 out of 5 stars not the best of Alcott
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 22, 2015
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This volume contains three novels and seven short miscellaneous pieces (short stories, reportage, public letters).

Work is an episodic account of the working life - and the romantic life - of a heroine forced/choosing to make her own way in the world as, variously an actress, a seamstress, a companion, a governess, a gardener and later a hospital nurse in the civil war. Some of this is based on Alcott's own experience.

Eight Cousins gives us a year in the life of Rose Campbell, 13 year old heiress and orphan as her seven cousins and her uncle bring her back to flourishing health. Rose in Bloom shows us Rose at a later age making a choice between two of her cousins as she looks for a husband (and reportedly uses her fortune for philanthropic ends, though there is litre of this in the novel).

The novels all comprise consecutive self-contained episodes. All are quite 'moralistic' or perhaps didactic - the author knows what is right and the characters will learn it somehow (should the young Rose wear ear-rings? would Christie be right to marry for money?). On the plus side, Alcott does have a knowledge of the human heart, does understand human temptation and weakness and does know how to write. But for me these gifts did not somehow all come together in these novels - which I felt in all cases were a little longer than I'd have wished them to be. There's a reason why Little Women and its sequels are famous, and these novels are not so well known.

I enjoyed the shorter writings the most - particularly Alcott's account of how she went out to service, aged 18, and her account of the ill treatment of Women's Part In the Concord Celebration (of American independence).

The volume itself is, as with all Library of America volumes, a pleasure to handle and read.
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