Description
This superb, scrupulously researched book breaks fascinating new ground. Clark provides readers with a comprehensive narrative for understanding the changing reception of Little Women. She explores a diverse and substantial number of responses, both in the United States and globally, including personal reactions, popular reviews, scholarly analyses, and adaptations of all kinds. She also raises larger questions about the creation of childhood and the formation of cultural memory. No one has previously researched the critical or popular reception of Little Women in such detail or with such nuance. This is an impressive, original, and well-written book. -- Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University, coeditor of The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia
About the Author
Beverly Lyon Clark is a professor of English and women's studies at Wheaton College. She is the author of Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America, also published by Johns Hopkins, the editor of Louisa May Alcott: The Contemporary Reviews, and the coeditor of "Little Women" and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays.
Reviews
Even as new Alcott-oriented scholarship, adaptations, and other artifacts appear, The Afterlife of 'Little Women' will continue to be essential to Alcott studies and a model for reception scholars. Reception The research in this book is stunning both in its breadth and depth... This is a book that not only does justice to its subject through a detailed presentation of evidence connected by astute critical judgments, but can also serve as a model for future studies. We are in Clark's debt for this immensely detailed, informative, and--yes--entertaining work. The Lion and the Unicorn [ The Afterlife of Little Women] is fascinating, cover-to-cover, for the many readers of Little Women still out there, whether scholar or generally interested fan, for Clark's prose is clear and lively; her ability to discuss so many diverse materials so cogently is admirable... As the sesquicentennial of Alcott's most famous work approaches (2018), scholars and general readers can only hope that Beverly Lyon Clark will be among those assessing this classic in its 150th year. Studies in the Novel From the child who saves her copy of Little Women as she flees from a Chicago fire, to a schoolgirl who warns Alcott that if she didn't 'make Laurie marry Beth' she would 'never read another of your books as long as I live'... the glimpses we get of child readers in the nineteenth century are compelling. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
Book Information
ISBN 9781421415581
Author Beverly Lyon Clark
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 24mm