Anne Boyd Rioux

Soon after its publication on 30 September 1868, Little Women became an enormous international bestseller. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on her and through teaching it, she has seen its effect on many others. In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, she recounts Louisa May Alcott’s inspiration for the book and examines why this tale set in the American Civil War has resonated through time. Alcott’s novel has moved generations of women, amongst them writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, J.K. Rowling, Cynthia Ozick and Ursula K. Le Guin. Rioux sees the novel’s beating heart in its portrayal of family resilience and its look at the struggles of girls growing into women. In gauging its current status, she shows why it remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

The eighteen essays in this volume explore Constance Fenimore Woolson’s prodigious range in period and genre as well as place, from the Great Lakes to the defeated South and across storied Europe to the Mediterranean. The whole of her professional life comes alive in this enlightening collection’s triptych.The first section, “A Writer’s Experiments,” reveals that Woolson’s play with familiar genres and unfamiliar characters began during the 1870s and extended until she died in 1894. Consistently, she tested the limits of representing women’s labor and their erotic desires.The second section, “Postbellum Souths,” follows Woolson’s travels through a land ravaged by war and injustice. Drawing on theories of travel, collective memory, the Lost Cause, religious controversy, and a race-bound region, these essays expose both the smugness of visitors and the agendas of residents that Woolson was among the first postwar writers to portray.The third section, “Through an International Lens,” considers expatriate perceptions of European and Mediterranean cultures as well as misconceptions about the Gilded Age United States. Here and throughout this volume, responses to Woolson’s travel sketches mingle with assessments of her fiction and poetry, while her encounters with the writing of other Americans demonstrate how regularly Woolson made her century’s literary terrain more subtle and complex.

The eighteen essays in this volume explore Constance Fenimore Woolson’s prodigious range in period and genre as well as place, from the Great Lakes to the defeated South and across storied Europe to the Mediterranean. The whole of her professional life comes alive in this enlightening collection’s triptych.The first section, “A Writer’s Experiments,” reveals that Woolson’s play with familiar genres and unfamiliar characters began during the 1870s and extended until she died in 1894. Consistently, she tested the limits of representing women’s labor and their erotic desires.The second section, “Postbellum Souths,” follows Woolson’s travels through a land ravaged by war and injustice. Drawing on theories of travel, collective memory, the Lost Cause, religious controversy, and a race-bound region, these essays expose both the smugness of visitors and the agendas of residents that Woolson was among the first postwar writers to portray.The third section, “Through an International Lens,” considers expatriate perceptions of European and Mediterranean cultures as well as misconceptions about the Gilded Age United States. Here and throughout this volume, responses to Woolson’s travel sketches mingle with assessments of her fiction and poetry, while her encounters with the writing of other Americans demonstrate how regularly Woolson made her century’s literary terrain more subtle and complex.

Soon after its publication on 30 September 1868, Little Women became an enormous international bestseller. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on her and through teaching it, she has seen its effect on many others. In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, she recounts Louisa May Alcott’s inspiration for the book and examines why this tale set in the American Civil War has resonated through time. Alcott’s novel has moved generations of women, amongst them writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, J.K. Rowling, Cynthia Ozick and Ursula K. Le Guin. Rioux sees the novel’s beating heart in its portrayal of family resilience and its look at the struggles of girls growing into women. In gauging its current status, she shows why it remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894), who contributed to Henry James’s conception of his heroine Isabelle Archer of The Portrait of a Lady, was one of the most accomplished American writers of the nineteenth century. The best known (and most misunderstood) facts of her life are her relationship with James and her suicide in Venice. Uncovering new sources, Anne Boyd Rioux provides a fuller picture of Woolson’s life, her fight against depression, her sources for her writing and her capacity for love and joy. As an expatriate in Europe, Woolson explored women’s thwarted ambitions while challenging the foremost male writers of her era. Rioux reveals an exceptional artist who pursued and received serious recognition despite the stigma attached to female authors.