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

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.

Reviews

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