Louisa May Alcott: Selected Fiction - Softcover

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832–1888), a novelist and poet, is perhaps known as the author of the "Little Women" trilogy: Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys. She was a committed abolitionist and feminist throughout her adult life.

DANIEL SHEALY is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He is the editor of Alcott in Her Own Time and has also been involved in numerous publications related to Alcott’s fiction, letters, and journals.

MADELEINE B. STERN is a partner in the New York rare book firm of Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern. She has written or edited several other books, eight about Louisa May Alcott.

JOEL MYERSON is Carolina Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Literature at the University of South Carolina.

One of the most prolific authors of her day, Alcott (1832-1888) is popularly identified with Little Women. Compiled by the editors of her journals, letters and A Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott , this anthology displays the range of her fiction. Raised in an impoverished, fiercely intellectual New England home according to transcendentalist principles, Alcott vented a fertile imagination and satisfied a need for money by producing romances, often under a pseudonym, for a ready audience. One of these, "The Rival Prima Donnas," though staid by contemporary norms, bespeaks Alcott's storyteller's passion. Alcott's later, realistic narratives, often with macabre themes, are represented in "Hope's Debut," with its shadow of incest and a curiously modern note in its theatrical background. Readers view the evolution of a thoughtful, expressive woman who wrote about war, race relations and the state of being single as well as about family.
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