Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Anne Boyd Rioux
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Anne Boyd Rioux
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Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy
The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

Author: Anne Boyd Rioux

Narrator: Kimberly Farr

Unabridged: 9 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/21/2018


Synopsis

Since its publication on September 30, 1868, Little Women has been one of America's favorite stories. While we now think of it as a girls' book, it was initially read by both boys and girls, men and women of all ages. Professor Anne Boyd Rioux, who read it in her twenties, tells us how Louisa May Alcott came to write the book and drew inspiration for her story from her own life. Its Civil War–era tale of family and community ties resonated through later wars, the Depression, and times of changing opportunities for women, even into the twenty-first century. Rioux sees the novel's beating heart in its honest look at adolescence and its inspiring vision of young women's resilience and hope. In gauging its reception today, she shows why it remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

About Anne Boyd Rioux

Anne Boyd Rioux, professor at the University of New Orleans, author of Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, and editor of Miss Grief and Other Stories, has received two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, one for public scholarship. She lives in New Orleans.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Emily

This was rather fun, but I enjoyed the first half, about Alcott's life and the immediate reception of her most famous book, a great deal more than the second, which peters out into an examination of pretty much any contemporary work in any medium in which girls are the the main characters (Katniss a......more

Goodreads review by Beth

Professor Anne Boyd Rioux makes some bold claims for Little Women, including that it is “arguably the most influential book ever written by an American woman.” This is not so much a work of literary criticism - although Rioux does cite what various literary critics have had to say about the novel -......more